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IMAGE  EVALUATION 
TEST  TARGET  (MT-3) 


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Photographic 

Sciences 
Corporation 


23  WEST  MAIN  STREET 

WEBSTER,  N.Y.  145S0 

(716)  872-4503 


_<;. 


CiHM/ICMH 

Microfiche 

Series. 


CIHM/ICMH 
Collection  de 
microfiches. 


Canadian  Institute  for  Historical  Microreproductions  /  Institut  canadien  de  microreproducticns  historiques 


Technica!  and  Bibliographic  Notes/Nutes  techniques  et  bibiiogr&phiques 


Tha  Institute  has  attempted  to  obtain  the  best 
original  copy  available  for  filming.  Features  of  this 
copy  which  may  be  bibliographically  unique, 
which  may  alter  any  of  the  images  in  the 
reproduction,  or  which  may  significantly  change 
the  usual  method  of  filming,  are  checked  below. 


L'Institut  a  microfilm^  le  meilleur  exemplaire 
qu'il  lui  a  6t6  possible  de  se  procurer.  Les  details 
de  cet  exemplaire  qui  sont  peut-dtre  uniques  du 
point  de  vuo  bibliographique,  qui  peuvent  modifier 
une  image  reproduite,  ou  qui  peuvent  exiger  une 
nodification  dans  la  m4thode  normale  de  filmage 
sont  indiqu6s  ci-dessous. 


□ 

D 
D 
□ 
□ 

□ 
□ 


Coloured  covers/ 
Converture  de  cculeur 

Cover!*  damaged/ 
Couverture  endommagee 

Covers  restored  and/or  laminated/ 
Couverture  restaur6e  et/ou  pellicul^e 

Cover  title  missing/ 

Le  titre  de  couverture  manque 

Coloured  maps/ 

Cartes  g^ographiques  en  couleur 

Coloured  ink  (i.e.  other  than  blue  or  black)/ 
EncrR  de  couleur  (i.e.  autre  que  bleue  ou  noire) 

Coloured  plates  and/or  illustrations/ 
Planches  et/ou  illustrations  en  couleur 

Bound  with  other  material/ 
Relie  avec  d'autres  documents 


El    Coloured  pages/ 
J    Pages  dc  couleur 


D 
D 

D 


Pages  damaged/ 
Pages  endommag6es 

Pages  restored  and/or  laminated/ 
Pages  restaur^es  et/ou  pellicul^es 

Pages  disco'oured,  stained  or  foxed/ 
Pages  d^cctorees,  tachet^es  ou  piquees 

Pages  detached/ 
Pages  detachees 


I    ~|    Showthrough/ 


Transparence 

Quality  of  prir 

Qualite  inSgale  de  I'impression 

;ludes  supplementary  materic 
mprend  du  materiel  supplementaire 


I      I    Quality  of  print  varies/ 

□    Includes  supplementary  material/ 
Co 


E 


y]    Tight  binding  may  cause  shadows  or  distortion 
J    along  interior  margin/ 

Ld  reiiure  serree  peut  causer  de  I'ombre  ou  de  la 
distortion  le  long  de  la  marge  int6ripure 


i 1 


Blank  leaves  added  during  restoration  may 
appear  within  the  text.  Whenever  possible,  these 
have  been  omitted  from  .'ilming/ 
II  se  peut  que  certaines  pages  blanches  ajoutdes 
lors  dune  restauration  apparaissent  dans  le  texte, 
mais,  lorsque  eels  4tait  possible,  ces  pages  n'ont 
pas  et^  filmees. 


n 


,    Only  edition  available/ 
I I    Seul3  Edition  d>sponible 


D 


Pages  wholly  or  partially  obscured  by  errata 
slip3,  tissues,  etc.,  have  been  refilmed  to 
ensure  the  best  possible  image/ 
Les  pages  totalement  ou  partiellement 
obscurcies  par  un  feuillet  d'errata,  une  pelure, 
etc.,  ort  6t6  filmees  fi  nnu>'eau  de  facon  i 
obtenir  la  meilleure  image  possible. 


□ 


Additional  comments./ 
Commentaires  suppl6mentaires; 


This  item  is  filmed  at  the  reduction  ratio  checked  Leiow/ 

Ce  document  est  film^  au  taux  de  reduction  indiqu^  ci-dessous. 


10X 

14X 

18X 

22X 

26X 

SOX 

J 

12X 


16X 


20X 


24X 


28X 


32X 


The  copy  filmed  here  has  been  reproduced  thanks 
to  the  generosity  of: 

National  Library  of  Canada 


L'exemplaire  film^  fut  reproduit  grdce  d  la 
g6n6rosit6  de: 

Bibliothdque  nationale  du  Canada 


The  images  appearing  here  are  the  best  quality 
possible  considering  the  condition  and  legibility 
of  the  original  copy  and  in  keeping  with  the 
filming  contract  specifications. 


Original  copies  in  printed  paper  covers  are  filmed 
beginning  with  the  front  cover  and  ending  on 
the  last  page  with  a  printed  or  illustrated  impres- 
sion, or  the  back  cover  when  appropriate.  All 
other  original  copies  are  filmed  beginning  on  the 
fiist  pag«>  with  a  printed  or  illustrated  impres- 
sion, and  ending  on  the  last  page  with  a  printed 
or  illustrated  impression. 


Les  images  suivantes  ont  6t6  reproduitsc  avec  le 
plus  grand  soin,  compte  tenu  de  la  condition  et 
de  la  nettetS  de  l'exemplaire  film6,  et  en 
conformity  avec  les  conditions  du  contrat  de 
filmage. 

Les  exemplaires  originaux  dont  la  couverture  en 
papier  est  imprim^e  sont  film<^s  en  commengant 
par  le  premier  plat  et  en  terminant  soit  par  la 
dernidre  page  qui  comporte  una  empreinte 
d'impression  ou  d'illustration,  soit  par  le  second 
plat,  selon  le  cas.  Tous  les  autres  exemplaires 
originaux  sont  film^s  en  commenpant  par  !a 
premidre  page  qui  comporte  une  empreinte 
d'impression  ou  d'illustration  et  en  terminant  par 
la  dernidre  page  qui  comporte  une  telle 
empreinte. 


The  last  recorded  frame  on  each  microfiche 
shall  contain  the  symbol  •-►(meaning  "CON- 
TINUED "),  or  the  symbol  V  (meaning   "END  "). 
whichever  applies. 

Maps,  plates,  charts,  etc.,  may  be  filmed  at 
different  reduction  rai<os.  Those  too  large  to  be 
entirely  included  in  one  exposure  are  filmed 
beginning  in  the  upper  left  hand  corner,  left  to 
right  and  top  to  bottom,  as  many  frames  as 
required.  The  following  diagrams  illustrate  the 
method: 


Un  des  symboles  suivants  apparattrp  si'r  la 
dernidre  image  de  cheque  microfiche,  selon  le 
cas:  le  symbole  — •►  signifie  "A  SUIVRE  ",  le 
symbole  V  signifie  "FIN". 

Les  cartes,  planches,  tableaux,  etc.,  peuvent  etre 
film^s  d  des  taux  de  reduction  diff^rents. 
Lorsque  le  document  est  trop  grand  pour  etre 
reproduit  en  un  seul  cliche,  il  est  film^  d  partir 
de  I'angie  sup6rieur  gauche,  de  gauche  d  droite, 
et  de  haut  en  bas,  en  prenant  le  nombre 
d'images  n^cessaire.  Les  diagrammes  suivants 
illustrent  la  mdthode. 


1 

2 

3 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

r 


AN  ODD  SITUATION 


B? 


M 


STANLEY  WATEx-^LOO 


^u^Aor  of   "A  Man  and  a  IVoman/'  etc. 


CHICAGO 

MORRILL,  HICxGINS  &  CO, 


PS  2/ St 


32585^ 


Copyright  1893 

BY 

S^'ANLEY  WATERLOO 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER 

I. 
II. 
III. 

IV. 
V. 
VI. 
VII. 
VIII. 
IX. 
X. 
XI. 
XII. 
XIII. 
XIV. 
XV. 
XVI. 
XVII. 
XVIII. 
XIX. 
XX. 
XXI. 
XXII. 
XXIII. 
XXIV. 


PAGE 

SOME  CHILDREN  AND  A  RAM 

SHiFTS    AND  CHANGES ^ 

LOVE   AND   THE   LINE  .... 

33 

A   PECULIAR   NEIGHBOR .^ 

THEY  DISCUSS   THINGS 

A   NEW   ELEMENT /-^ 

07 

AT  TABLE    AND   IN  THE  WOODS     gj 

WHAT   HAPPENED    IN   AUTUMN 

INTO  SPRING   AND   BEYOND 

GEMINI       

115 

MATTERS    BECOME   COMPLICATED jjg 

JASON'S    hen's     nest     

VARIOUS    SMALL    HAPPENINGS     '  j  -q 

THE   DRIFT   OF   THINGS '162 

INCIDENT   TO   THE    SEASON '  j^- 

SERIOUS    MATTERS    DEBATED jgj 

TWO   MEN    TALKING 20^ 

LIGHT   AND    SHADE   AGAIN 318 

THE   WATER    SNAKES ..2^1 

NEARING   A    CLIMAX    342 

AT  CLOSE    QUARTERS 3  e 

AMONG  THE   HONEYSUCKLES 266 

POST  MORTEM ^70 

TRUTH  FROM  A  LUNATIC .'.291 


AN  ODD  SITUATION 

CHAPTER  I. 

SOME  CHILDREN  AND  A  RAM. 

No  ram  of  your  modern  breed  was  he, 
With  silky  wool  and  long  pedigree; 
No  pet  of  the  yearly  fair  was  here, 
Southdown  plump  ur  big  Liecestershire, 
With  back  as  broad  as  a  Persian  mat, 
Short-legged,  lazy,  and  round  and  fat. 
But  a  monster  gaunt,  stepping  free  and  high, 
With  a  wicked  look  in  his  s-leaming  eye, 
And  front  as  tjnarled  as  a  cypress  limb- 
Not  one  in  the  village  but  dreaded  him! 

—Legend  of  St.  Louis, 

My  name  is  Jason  Moore,  and  I  am  a  hired  man 
workmg  on  the  farm  of  David  Long,  which  farm 
laps  the  line,  being  partly  in  the  state  of  New 
York  and  partly  in  the  Dominion  of  Canada.  I 
have  been  familiar  with  the  history  of  the  neigh- 
borhood  and  its  people  for  more  than  a  quarter  of 
a  century,  and  am  particularly  well  acquainted  with 
what  has  happened  on  and  about  the  place  where  1 


AN   ODD   SITUATION 


have  lived  so  long.  I  have  no  story  of  the  war, 
nor  even  of  such  adventure  as  might  come  when 
the  woods  hereabouts  were  still  inhabited  by  dan- 
gerous v'ild  beasts,  but  it  does  seem  to  me  that 
the  occurrences  on  the  Long  farm  for  the  past  few 
years  are  worth  the  telling.  Had  I  more  of  the 
gift  for  a  story — had  I  such  a  faculty  in  that  way 
as  has  Eber  Jones,  who  keeps  the  grocery  store  at 
Magone,  our  county  seat — I  know  I  could  make  it 
interesting,  but  that  is  a  gift  which  comes  to  but 
few  people.  It's  likely  it  may  be  inherited.  Eber's 
father  had  it.  He  could  tell  a  story  in  any  way  to 
make  one  cry  or,  as  they  say,  to  make  a  horse  laugh. 
I  have  always  envied  those  with  such  a  knack.  I 
had  a  good  common  school  educatioh,  such  as, 
thank  God!  any  American  who  wishes  it  may  have, 
and  I  am  not  much  afraid  of  my  grammar,  though 
I  may  use  some  common  expressions— but  I  can't 
get  always  just  the  word  I  want. 

It  may  be  worth  while  to  say  a  little  more  about 
myself  so  that  what  I  had  to  do  with  all  that  hap- 
pened may  be  better  understood.  I  am  a  round- 
shouldered,  pretty  solid  sort  of  a  man,  now  about 
sixty  years  of  age  and  I  have  been  a  widower  for 
more  than  thirty  of  those  years.  I  got  along  very 
well  during  those  seven  or  eight  years  while  I  was 


SOME  CHILDREN  AND  A  RAM 


it 

)r 

LS 


married,  but  when  my  wife  died  I  concluded  to 
remain  single.  I  am  naturally  of  a  peaceful  dis- 
position. When  there  is  no  work  to  be  done,  I 
am  very  fond  of  reading  and  go  over  the  news- 
paper thoroughly,  and  I  take  an  interest  in  politics, 
as  I  believe  any  good  citizen  should  do.  The  gov- 
ernment is  only  a  big  concern  in  which  he  is  a 
stockholder,  and  he  ought  to  look  after  his 
interests  as  well  as  he  can  in  his  little  way.  I  am 
by  no  means  a  solitary  man.  I  own  a  few  acres 
ten  miles  south  of  here,  enough  to  make  me  safe 
in  the  matter  of  a  home,  even  had  I  no  other 
savings,  but  I  rented  the  little  place  and  came 
here  to  work  years  ago,  partly  because  I  was  lone- 
some and  partly  because  Hosea  Long,  father  of 
David,  was  an  old  boy-hood  friend  of  mine  and  I 
liked  to  be  with  him.  He  is  dead  now — I  am 
living  with  his  son.  The  young  man,  I  call  him 
so  still,  though  he  is  over  thirty — seems,  in  fact, 
almost  like  a  son  of  my  own,  I  have  been  near  him 
so  constantly  from  his  boyhood.  For  that  matter, 
I  have  known  that  dear  Canadian,  Alice  Mackenzie, 
nearly  as  long  and  she  has  quite  as  much  to  do 
with  this  story  as  has  David.  How  things  have 
changed!  I  '"emember  those  two  as  children  and 
even  now  there  comes  to  me  distinctly  the  memory 


8 


AN   ODD   SITUATION 


of  what  happened  one  afteinoon  when  David  was 
but  eleven  and  Ahce  nine  and  when,  children  as 
they  were,  they  could  have  no  idea  that  their  lives 
would  ever  become  tangled  together.  To  me  it 
was  very  funny,  as  I  saw  it  from  the  distance  of  a 
couple  of  fields  away,  though  I  felt  like  trouncing 
the  boy  afterward.  Of  course  I  don't  know  just 
what  he  was  thinking  of,  the  mannerless  youngster, 
but  I  can  guess  pretty  nearly,  for  I  knew  most  of 
his  freaks  and  fancies,  as  he  had  them  then. 

It  was  one  afternoon  in  August  when  a  bo)  — 
this  same  country  scape-grace — sat  on  the  top  rail 
of  a  fence  and  gazed  down  across  the  fields  where 
ran  the  creek,  shaded  by  the  wild  plum  and  thorn- 
apple  trees  which  grew  along  its  bank  and  which 
had  been  spared  by  the  axe  of  the  earliest  settler. 
The  youth  had  reached  just  that  age  when  a  boy 
ought,  ordinarily,  to-be  killed;  the  age  when  he  is 
clumsy  and  uncouth  of  appearance,  and  when,  if 
there  be  any  sense  of  fun  in  him,  it  is  shown 
often  in  a  brutal  kind  of  way.  I've  read  some- 
where what  someone  has  said,  that,  if  they  could 
be  brought  to  life  again,  aged  say  seventeen,  all 
boys  should  be  slain  at  the  age  of  nine,  or  there- 
abouts, and  this  boy  sitting  on  the  fence  was  no 
exception.      He  was  healthy  and  too  enterprising. 


SOME  CHILUKEN  AND  A  RAM 


The  scene  upon  which  the  boy  looked  was  very 
fair.  I'm  not  poetical  myself,  but  I  can  see 
things.  The  slope  of  the  field  before  him  toward 
the  creek  was  clover-covered  for  late  mowing  and 
there  was  the  pleasant  smell  of  the  blossoms  in  the 
air.  Upon  the  rising  slope  on  the  other  side,  a 
field  of  ripening  grain  was  made  a  brighter  yellow 
in  the  sunshine.  Running  nearly  in  the  same 
direction  as  the  creek  and  its  line  of  trees  and 
bushes  was  a  rail  fence  which  crossed  the  stream 
at  one  point,  so  that  it  ran  partly  in  each  field,  a 
convenient    thing  for  the  watering  of  cattle. 

The  boy  sitting  with  his  bare  feet  on  the  third 
rail  of  the  fence  and  his  face  resting  between  nis 
hands,  his  eib'"ws  on  his  knees,  seemed  rather  in 
a  lazy  mood.  His  chip  hat  was  pushed  backward 
on  his  head.  The  light  wind  played  upon  his  fore- 
head and  his  e;,eswere  blinking  sleepily.  After  a 
while,  though,  his  manner  changed.  Something  at 
a  distance  caught  his  eye. 

What  he  saw  was  a  group  of  children  who  came 
into  the  field  at  the  side  farthest  from  him. 
There  were  four  of  them,  the  largest  a  girl  of  nearly 
his  own  age,  who  carried  a  basket.  There  were 
two  other  girls,  somewhat  smaller,  and  a  boy,  the 
last  a  child  yet  in  dresses  but  very  sturdy   and  red 


lO 


AN    ODD   SITUATION 


of  leg.  Any  one  acquainted  with  the  country  and 
the  seasons  of  its  wild  fruits  could  tell  that  they 
were  going  plum  gathering.  David  knew  all  the 
children  well.  The  oldest  girl  was  Alice  Mackenzie, 
the  only  child  of  Alexander  Mackenzie,  the  Cana- 
dian who  owned  the  farm  across  the  line,  and  the 
others  were  the  childre^i  of  Jonas  Latimer,  the 
farmer  to  the  west  on  the  Canadian  side.  The  boy 
had  half  a  mind  to  go  over  and  help  in  the  wild 
plum  getting.  He  could  climb  the  trees  and 
shake  down  the  fruit,  and  that  would  make  the 
gathering  easier.  But  a  noise  behind  him  made 
him  change  his  mind. 

The  noise  was  only  a  hoarse  bleat,  but  as  David 
turned  on  the  fence  he  became  wide  awake  in  a 
moment.  No  more  laziness!  He  saw  an  enemy; 
one  just  now  harmless,  indeed,  but  an  enemy  just 
the  same.  The  bleat  was  from  the  throat  of  a 
beast,  and  that  beast  a  ram.  He  was  coming 
across  the  field  toward  the  boy  and  the  youth  him- 
self seemed  to  be  what  he  was  drawn  by.  It  was 
an  earnest-looking  ram,  one, you  could  see,  who,  had 
business  on  hand  and  was  ready  to  attend  to  it. 
He  came  trotting  up  close  to  the  fence  and  then  up 
and  down  beside  it,  bleating  harshly.  He  wanted  to 
get  at  the  boy  sitting  up  there  just  beyond  his  reach. 


SOME  CHILDREN  AND  A  RAM 


II 


The  boy,  peiched  aloft  in  safety,  was  pleased 
mightily.  Very  intimately,  to  his  sorrow  at  times, 
did  he  know  this  four-legged  thing.  No  terrible- 
looking  monster  was  this  ram,  for  he  was  hornless, 
out  a  more  vengeful  and  resolute  cross  of  scrub 
and  Cotswold  never  stalked  in  a  meadow.  Time 
and  again  had  the  boy,  when  after  the  cows,  been 
treed  by  the  brute,  and  even  the  grown  men  about 
the  place  were  cautious  when  crossing  the  field 
where  he  might  be  feeding.  From  the  tip  of  his 
stumpy  tail  to  the  end  rj  his  Roman  nose  the 
beabt  was  full  of  fight  and  ready  to  face  any- 
th'nw      Even  the  cattle  and  horses  feared  him. 

The  boy  was  tickled.  He  was  safe  and  had  the 
ram  at  a  disadvantage.  He  jumped  off  the  fence 
on  his  own  side,  filled  his  pockets  with  pebbles, 
and  pelted  his  bleating  foe  with  great  comfort  and 
vigor.  The  ram  backed  off  and  came  at  the  f^nce 
viciously  and  with  a  crash,  but  that  did  not  change 
the  state  of  things.  The  boy  was  out  of  reach  and 
the  ram  tired  finally  of  the  fun.  Then,  into  the 
head  of  tiicU  sun-browned  youth  came  an  idea,  for 
the  harboring  of  which  he  should  have  been  thrash- 
ed within  an  inch  of  his  life! 

He  looked   down    toward   the  plum  trees  where 
Alice  and  the  younger  children  were  gathering  the 


12 


AN    ODD    SITUATION 


fruit,  all  unmindful  of  him  and  his  affair  on  the 
other  side  of  the  field,  and  noted  carelessly  that 
they  were  doing  well.  The  plums,  he  knew,  were 
lying  thick  upon  the  ground  and  he  could  see  that 
the  basket  Alice  carried  was  nearly  filled,  for,  as 
they  walked  long  beside  the  copse,  the  largest  of 
the  other  children  would  occasionally  give  her  help. 
The  little  party  had  just  turned  into  where  a  road- 
way for  the  wagons  in  haying  and  harvest  time  had 
been  cut  through  the  bushes,  and  there  they  had 
stopped  and  were  busy  now  in  adding  to  their 
store. 

The  boy  looked  at  the  plum  gatherers,  then  at 
the  chafing  ram  and  there  came  upon  his  face  a 
grin:  "If  Billy  could  get  a<-  'em!  Great  Scott!" 

And  the  thought  grew  upon  him  and  the  devil 
which  gets  into  boys  prevailed,  and  he  moved  of! 
along  the  fence  to  where  the  bars  were,  the  ram 
following  in  chase  upon  the  other  side.  One  bar, 
high  up,  the  boy  pulled  out  from  the  end,  the  ram 
watching  him.  Another  bar,  and  through  the  gap 
the  ram  leaped  savagely.  He  turned  for  the  boy 
but  that  personage  was  on  the  fence  and  walking 
away  along  the  top  rail.  The  ram  followed  until 
they  were  rods  away  from  the  bars.  Then  the  boy 
hopped  down  and  ran  to   a   big  stump  in  the  field 


thi 

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dol 

tui 

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SOME  CHILDREN  AND  A  RAM 


13 


the  sheep  had  left,  where  he  hid  himself  away 
from  his  pursuer's  sight.  The  brute  ran  up  and 
down  for  a  time,  but  seeing  his  enemy  no  longer, 
turned  away  to  feed.  Soon,  being  in  the  field  where 
the  plum  trees  were,  he  saw  the  children  and  began 
moving  toward  them  slowly.  The  boy,  peering 
from  behind  the  stump  and  grasping  the  situation, 
came  cautiously  to  the  bars  and  followed  the  ram, 
at  a  safe  distance  in  the  rear.  The  children 
among  the  plum  trees  worked  away,  unconscious  of 
any  danger. 

From  a  walk  the  ram  changed  his  pace  to  a  trot 
and,  at  a  couple  of  hundred  yards  from  the  children, 
let  them  know  what  was  coming  by  harsh  bleats 
that  meant  mischief.  They  saw  their  peril  and  then 
there  was  a  scsne  of  fright,  and  loud  cries  from  all 
the  younger  as  they  gathered  about  the  oldest, 
clinging  helplessly  to  her  dress.  As  well  as  the 
boy  did  they  know  the  old  ram  and  his  savage 
ways.  As  for  Alice,  she  was  at  first,  almost  un- 
nerved with  fright.  She  turned  to  flee  into  the 
bushes  but  checked  herself,  for  there  were  the  help- 
less little  ones!  And  now  the  ram,  changing  his 
pace  again,  was  coming  forward  with  a  rush.  The 
girl  stood  stock  still,  instinctively  holding  out  be- 
fore   her — with    some    fancy  it  might  give  her   a 


H 


AN   ODD   SITUATION 


slight  protection — the   big  basket   full   of   plums. 

Have  you  ever  seen  a  ram  make  his  charge?  If 
you  have  grown  up  on  a  farm  you  know  all  about 
it.  The  brute  feels  only  that  he  has  a  strong 
neck  and  a  hard  head  and  that  he  must  hurl  his 
body,  without  any  reason,  at  what  he  wants  to 
hurt.  And  so  the  beast  gathered  his  legs  beneath 
him  now  and,  vath  two  or  three  great  leaps,  he  was 
close  upon  the  children  and  then,  with  arched 
back  and  lowered  head,  he  launched  himself!  He 
struck  the  basket  fairly  and  went  through  the  scared 
group  like  a  huge,  wool-covered  rock  thrown  from 
a  catapult,  hurling  aside  and  overthrowing  Alice 
and  the  little  ones.     The  air  was  full  of  plums! 

The  boy  out  in  the  field  threw  himself  on  the 
grass  in  a  spasm  of  wild  delight.  He  rolled  over 
and  over,  yelling  in  the  frenzy  of  his  fun.  It  was 
too  good!  He  laughed  until  his  eyes  were  full  of 
tears,  then  raised  himself  to  a  sitting  posture,  to 
note  the  enc'  of  the  affair.  From  a  dense  place 
in  a  thicket  on  one  side  stuck  up  a  pair  of  short, 
fat,  red  legs,  wobbling  violently,  and  the  howl  of 
a  lusty  youngster  in  distress  showed  where  the 
baby  was.  The  small  girls,  unhurt,  had  crept  away 
in  the  bushes  and  were  running,  screaming,  toward 
the  nearest  fence,  and    the  ram,  paying  no  atten- 


SOME  CHILDREN  AND  A  RAM 


IS 


tion  to  them,  was  occupied  with  Alice.  The  girl, 
not  hurt  much  by  her  overthrow,  had  fallen  close 
beside  the  bushes  and  had  shown  the  good  sense 
then  to  get  as  close  to  them  as  she  could,  and  there 
lie  stiU.  The  beast  trotted  up  and  down  beside 
her,  trying  to  butt  her,  though  in  vain.  A  ram  is 
practically  harmless  to  anything  lying  close  to 
the  earth.  The  boy  in  the  field,  as  his  eye  took  in 
the  whole  scene,  roared  again.  He  noted  all  the 
terror,  the  fleeing  children  and  the  baby's  waving 
legs,  and  then,  as  he  looked  at  Alice  and  saw  what 
she  was  doing,  there  came  to  him  a  dim  feeling 
that  she  was  very  sensible  and  plucky — for  a  girl. 
He  became  a  little  ashamed  of  his  own  part  in  the 
matter.  It  is  a  rare  thing,  but  a  boy  of  eleven  has 
really  been  known  to  be  ashamed  of  something  he 
has  done,  and  this  was  one  of  the  occasions.  The 
ram  was  stubborn  in  staying  by  the  girl  and  the 
boy,  thought  of  how  often  he  had  been  kept  treed 
by  the  same  brute.  He  began  to  get  mad  at  the 
animal!  He  was  half  inclined  to  fight  it,  to  try  to 
finally  subdue  it,  but  he  had  fears.  Such  a  thing 
had  been  in  his  mind  for  some  time,  but  he  had 
never  quite  braced  up  to  it.  Bad  luck  had  come 
to  a  man  or  two  who  had  held  too  light  an  opinion 
of  that  same  ram.     But  the  boy  got  more  angered. 


i6 


AN    ODD   SITUATION 


He  did  not  care  so  much  for  the  strait  Alice  was 
in — that  was  a  good  joke — but  the  ranri  was  too 
mean  and  he  was  tired  of  being  chased,  almost . 
daily.  And  then,  with  his  courage  all  at  once  up 
to  the  reckless  point,  he  found  a  club,  a  s>tout  one, 
and  ran  toward  the  bushes,  yelling. 

The  ram  paid  no  attention  to  the  boy  until  he 
was  close  at  hand,  but  then  he  did  not  hesitate  a 
moment.  Seeing  an  enemy  upright  was  enough! 
He  came  trotting  out,  lowered  his  head  and  charged. 
The  boy  stood  his  ground  well.  He  struck  with 
all  his  might  as  the  ram  flung  himself  at  him,  but 
he  might  as  well  have  smitten  the  air.  The  club 
was  not  even  such  a  protection  as  had  been  the 
girl's  heavy  basket  of  plums.  It  had  nc  more 
effect  on  that  bony  front  than  a  pat  of  the  hand, 
and  the  boy,  struck  fairly  on  the  chest,  was 
knocked  over  and  over  and  lay  on  the  ground  half 
stunned  and  so  bruised  that  it  was  a  month  before 
the  soreness  left.  The  ram,  carried  forward  by  the 
rush,  went  fairly  above  his  enemy  and  for  yards 
beyond,  and  then  turned  for  another  charge. 
The  boy,  dazed  by  what  had  happened,  lay  still 
and  the  sheep  began  to  trot  around  him,  bleating 
impatiently.  But  this  could  not  last.  The  boy, 
who  was  lying  flat  on   his  back,  mad  clear  though 


SOME  CHILDREN  AND  A  RAM 


17 


now,  as  he  got  his  senses,  raised  himself  a  little 
in  an  effort  to  turn  over  and  crawl  toward  his  club. 
Then  the  ram  rushed  at  him  again.  Almost  with- 
out thought  David  dropped  his  head  and  put  up 
his  hands  clutchingly  and  caught  the  animal  about 
the  neck.  And  a  minute  later  he  knew  he  was 
master  of  the  situation! 

The  ram  plunged  and  scrambled  backward  but 
the  boy's  hands  were  buried  in  the  wool  and  his 
grip  was  strong.  He  locked  both  arms  together 
and,  thrashed  and  tossed  about  though  he  might 
be,  he  knew  the  ram  could  not  hurt  him.  The 
beast  leaped  and  floundered  and  bleated.  It 
rushed  wildy  here  and  there  but  could  not  shake 
off  its  desperate  burden.  Then  the  boy  got  one 
leg  over  its  back  and  raised  himself  fairly  astride 
and  curled  both  legs  underneath  and  with  arms  still 
locked  about  the  animal's  neck  lay  closely  and 
yelled  triumphantly.  He  could  no  more  be 
shaken  off  than  could  a  lynx  from  a  deer  it  had 
dropped  upon.  The  ram  galloped  heavily  about 
the  field,  bleating  now  not  in  defiance  but  in  fear, 
and  getting  weaker  every  moment  of  its  frantic 
and  frightened  run.  The  boy,  proud  as  Lucifer 
from  the  discovery  of  a  way  for  getting  even,  was 
becoming  more  daring.   He  reached  down  one  hand 


i8 


AN    ODD    SITUATION 


and  caught  hold  of  a  foreleg  below  the  knee  and 
the  brute  stumbled  and  fell.  The  next  minute  the 
boy  was  astride  its  neck  and  a  moment  later  its 
fore  feet  were  tied  together  with  a  stout  cord,  some- 
thing the  youth  had  about  him,  of  course,  as  might, 
have  been  expected  from  one  of  his  age  and  cir- 
cumstances. Then,  with  a  kick  or  two  at  the  foe, 
he    strode  off  toward  the  plum  trees. 

The  girl,  freed  from  danger,  was  up  and  had 
pulled  the  baby  from  the  bushes,  and  that  young- 
ster, still  sobbing,  was  all  himself  again,  his  pudgy 
legs  maybe  a  little  redder  than  they  were  before, 
but  otherwise  all  right.  Alice  had  watched  the 
fight  in  the  field  with  curiosity  but,  seeing  the  boy 
at  last  victorious,  had  begun  gathering  up  the 
plums.  As  David  came  near  she  straightened  and 
looked  at  him  but  said  nothing. 

"I  licked  him,  didn't  1.^"  said  the  boy  with  an 
air. 

The  girl  made  no  direct  answer.  "Did  you  let 
down  the  bars.'"  she  asked. 

His  face  became  red.  "Y-e-es,"  he  said,  "but 
it  was  only  in  fun." 

She  looked  at  him  with  dignity.  "I  think  you 
are  a  very  mean  boy." 

He    did    not  say  anything    but,    rather   shame- 


SOME  CHILDREN  AND  A  RAM 


19 


faced,  bef,Mn  helping  her  gather  the  plum  the 
younger  girls,  who  had  come  back  now,  taking  a 
hand  in  the  work.  No  other  word  was  spoken  be- 
tween David  and  Alice.  The  little  party  went 
away  with  the  fruit  ahJ  David  went  back  to  his 
prisoner.  He  punched  the  ram,  he  put  dirt  in  its 
mouth,  he  maltreated  it  in  every  way  he  could 
think  of  and,  when,  as  he  finally  concluded  was 
safe,  the  cord  was  taken  from  its  legs,  the  beast 
dashed  away  in  a  panic.  Its  pride  was  broken, 
and  toward  human  kind,  and  David  in  particular, 
it  was  thenceforth  most  discreet. 

And  of  this  one  little  happening  of  a  summer 
afternoon  I  have  told  only  because  it  so  often 
comes  back  to  me,  and  because  this  same  boy  and 
the  girl  figure  so  much  in  what  I  have  to  tell. 
They  had  no  very  high  opinion  of  each  other  then. 

Most  of  what  I  have  told  I  saw  from  a  distance. 
Then  I  came  across  the  fields  in  time  to  capture 
David,  just  as  the  ram  was  loosened.  I  caught 
the  young  man  by  the  shoulder  and  shook  him  with 
some  earnestness.  "What  have  you  been  doing.-"' 
I  asked. 

"Did  you  see  me  rastle  with  the  ram.^"  he  said, 
dodging  the  question. 

"Never  mind!     That  was  an  unmanly  trick  let- 


20 


AN    ODD    SITUATION 


ting  the  thing  in  on  the  children."  The  young 
wretch's  face  sobered  for  a  moment  and  then  that 
spirit  of  the  boy  and  of  fun  spoke  out  again:  "O, 
Jason," he  said,  "you  ought  to  have  seen  it!  It 
just  rained  plums!" 


at 

3. 
It 


CHAPTER  II 


SHIFTS    AND    CHANGES. 


Lord  Lovel  must  needs  go  sailing  away: 

(Tlicrc  were  other  maids  to  see) 
lie  was  gone  from  his  home  for  a  year  and  a  day — 

And  then  he  came  back  to  me. 

—  The  Old  Story. 

Fifteen  years  do  not  bring  so  many  changes  in 
the  country  as  in  the  city,  but  boys  and  girls  make 
an  exception.  Much  had  happened  since  the  after- 
noon when  that  bad  youth,  David,  had  let  the 
ram  into  the  field  where  were  Alice  and  the 
younger  children.  There  were  gaps  in  the  house- 
holds to  which  the  two  belonged,  and  they  them- 
selves were  different  personages  from  the  young- 
sters of  whom  I  have  been  telling.  Each  had 
grown,  just  as  had  the  young  trees  in  the  orchards 
and  they  were  new  people — a  man  of  parts  and 
a  fine  young  woman. 

For     most    children     of     tolerably    well-to-do 

farming   folk    in    the    lower   lake    region  there  is, 

unless    there  be  great  ambitions,  a  simple  way   of 

21 


22 


AN   ODD   SITUATION 


getting  acquainted  with  the  world  and  "being 
somebody."  The  boy,  it  is  thought,  should  learn 
how  to  act  in  good  society — and  so  should  the  girl, 
to  a  certainty.  The  plan  is  easy:  Along  in  the 
teens,  somewhere  the  boy  or  girl,  as  the  case  may 
be,  must  in  winter  go  to  school  in  the  nearest  town. 
So,  when  he  was  about  eighteen,  David,  who  had 
finished  with  the  district  teacher,  had  gone  to 
Magone,  the  county  seat,  to  attend  school  there 
while  snow  flew,  and  it  chanced  that,  a  year  later, 
Alice  did  the  same  thing.  Naturally,  one  would 
think,  the  girl  should  have  been  sent  to  a  Cana- 
dian town  school  instead;  but  the  town  on  the 
American  side  was  nearer,  and  along  the  border 
the  more  intelligent  have  no  prejudices.  They  had 
been  together  in  the  same  town  so  for  two  winters 
at  the  time  of  which  I  am  telling,  and  it  might  be 
supposed  that,  coming  from  the  same  place  out  in 
the  country,  they  would  be  close  friends;  but  it 
really  was  not  so.  The  girl,  as  girls  always 
do,  had  developed  faster  than  the  boy,  and  was 
the  quicker  to  learn  all  the  city  ways — for,  of 
course,  the  Magone  way  was  counted  the  "city" 
way.  When  David  was  twenty  pnd  she  eighteen, 
he  was  siill  awkward  and  a  little  shy,  while 
Alice  was  quite    at   ease  in  Magone  society.     He 


mi 


iii? 


StIIFTS    AND   CHANr.KS 


23 


met  her  sometimes  at  the  vill.ige  parties  which  hu 
ventured  to  attend,  and,  as  matters  stood  between 
the  two,  there  wasn't  nnicli  resembhmce  between 
now  and  the  time  wlien  he  had  so  much  fun  from 
her  phnn  {^'atliering.  Slie  tilled  his  eye  more  than 
any  of  the  other  girls,  but  he  was  quite  as  afraid  of 
her  as  of  any  of  those  who  had  lived  in  the  town  all 
their  lives.  She  was  not  like  them — she  was  still 
a  country  j^irl  all  throuf^h — but  she  was  as  much 
at  home  as  they.  He  told  me  once,  lonj^"  afterward 
when  he  had  become  old  enough  and  experienced 
enough  to  speak  out,  that  she  made  him  think  of 
an  Alderney  his  father  had  once  bought  and  turned 
in  with  the  other  cattlo:  That  was  an  odd  com- 
parison to  make,  but  David  never  became  anything 
but  a  lover  of  the  country  and  one  vvho  used  its  ex- 
pressions in  trying  to  tell  what  he  thought  of  any- 
thing and,  for  that  matter,  Alice  was  very  much  like 
him,  though  at  this  time  they  did  not  know  each 
other's  tastes.  He  said  that  once  he  found  some 
verses  in  a  newspaper  that  made  him  think  of  her, 
and  he  liad  cut  them  out.  He  showed  them  to  me-  - 
the  piece  of  paper  on  which  they  were  printed,  a 
good  deal  frayed  at  the  edges  and  worn  at  the 
creases  from  having  been  carried  in  his  pocket- 
book  so  long.    They  were  these: 


Ml!' 


vm 


24 


AN    ODD    SITUATION 


m 
if 


i 


'iiiii 


I 

'jpifll 


iir 


She  was  brought  to  the  city  as  flowers  are  brought—* 
You  will  find  not  a  fairer  one  all  the  world  over — 

But  none  of  the  city's  hard  features  she's  caught, 
Yoa  can  tell  by  her  face  she  was  born  'mid  the  clover. 

Her  voice  is  as  pure  as  the  bluebird's  low  note, 
In  the  morns   when  the  rigor  of  April's  abating, 

And  her  laugh  has  the  trill  which  you  hear  from  the  throat 
Of  the  bobolink,  joying  in  May  and  the  mating. 

Her  teeth  are  as  white  as  the  liquor  which  flows 

When  milkweed  is  wounded;  her  lips  have  the  redness 

Of  the  prickly-ash  berry  of  scarlet,  which  glows 
Full  of  life  though  about  it  be  autumn'  gray  deadness. 

And  hei  breath  is  as  sweet  as  the  liverwort's  scent 

That  is  borne  with  delight  by  the  wooing  March  zephyr. 

And  her  eyes  have  the  softness  and  pleadingness  blent 
In  the  big,  meltmg  eyes  of  the  innocent  heifer. 

Her  warm,  fluffy  hair  has  a  touch  of  the  gold 

In  the  silk  of  the  corn  when  it's  near  to  ihe  reaping; 

Its  meshes  the  gleam  t)f  the  summer  enfold — 

For  it  would  not  depart — in  their  permanent  keeping. 

Her  thin  little  ears  have  the  hue  of  the  pink, 
The  wild  pink  that  grows  by  the  creek's  shallow  waters, 

And  her  cheeks  all  the  blush  of  the  rose  by  the  brink 
Of  the  same  little  stream — Nature  humors  her  daughters. 

She  is  fair  in  the  city  world,  O,  she  is  fair! 

But  she's  strayed  from  her  home,  has  the  beautiful  rover, 
And  she's  brought  a  reflection  of  all  that  is  there; 

You  can  tell  by  her  face  she  was  born  'mid  the  clover.  I 


SHIFTS    AND   CHANGES 


25 


When  David  showed  the  verses  to  me  he  was 
no  longer  in  much  awe  of  Alice  and  spoke  of  them 
only  in  a  casual  way,  after  I  had  said  something 
about  her  pleasant  manner  on  some  occasion  which 
!  now  forgot,  but  I  believe  that,  at  the  time  he  cut 
them  from  the  newspaper,  he  was  half  in  love  with 
her,  already.  If  so,  though,  he  did  not  tell  of  it,  and, 
after  that,  they  were  separated  for  a  season  and 
when  they  met  again  he  had  grown  to  be  less  timid. 

There's  a  pretty  big  belt  of  country  lying  east 
and  west  along  the  lower  lakes  from  which  even 
the  ■  young  man  with  tastes  only  for  the  farm 
usually  trie?  his  wings  a  little  before  he  settles 
down.  The  country  is  yet  comparatively  young 
but  has  become  old  enough  for  that.  Michigan,  the 
Province  of  Ontario  and  north-western  New  York 
are  distinctly  in  this  belt.  Ontario,  lying  largely 
between  Michigan  and  New  York  is,  except  for  its 
relations,  a  state  like  one  of  them.  It  has  the 
same  climate  and  something  like  the  same  people. 
They  are  good  people,  too,  in  that  big  tongue  of 
land;  no  better,  perhaps  than  those  in  other  parts 
of  the  Dominion,  but  we  understand  them  better. 
They  cross  the  line  much  and  there  is  a  mingling 
of  families.  But  I  was  only  speaking  of  the  belt  in 
general  and  going  to  say  that  David  must  needs  do 


m 

it! 


26 


AN   ODD    SITUATION 


ll 


as  others  had  done  and  go  away  from  us  for  a 
time.  His  winter  schooling  in  the  town  was 
ended  and  he  left  us.  We  missed  his  strong  arms 
about  the  farm — he  had  grown  into  a  big,  earnest 
fellow  who  worked  with  a  will — and  r  w  Hosea 
and  I  must  get  other  help  or  do  all  the  work 
alone,  and  we  were  hardly  equal  to  it.  David  had 
engaged  on  a  propeller  and  was  getting  acquainted 
with  the  great  lakes  and  the  citie.>  along  them 
and  seeing  more  of  life.  He  had  good  sense, 
though,  and  worked  hard  and  tried  to  keep  a  little 
ahead  and  get  practical  views  of  things  without  ever 
becoming  wild  or  too  fond  of  the  towns,  as  too  many 
young  men  from  the  country  do.  I'm  inclined 
to  the  belief  that  it  pays  a  young  fellow,  even  one 
who  is  going  to  be  a  farmer,  to  knock  around 
for  three  or  four  years,  if  he  will  but  keep  a  level 
head.      With  David  it  was  all  right. 

In  time  there  came  upon  him  a  healthful  home- 
sickness and  we  got  him  back  to  the  farm  and  the 
growing  things,  the  place  which  suited  him  best. 
It  was  comfortable  to  have  him  with  us  agrln,  it 
was  too  good  to  look  at  him  as  he  went  swinging 
across  a  field,  and,  a  little  later,  it  proved  to  have 
been  well  that  he  came  back  when  he  did,  for  his 
father  died  within  six  months  of  his  return  and  he 


m 

w 
m 


SHIFTS    AND    CHANGES 


2^ 


was  very  glad  that  ho  had  not  delayed  his  home- 
coming. 

There  were  but  three  of  us  who  really  belonged 
— for  I  counted  with  the  family — now  left  in  the 
old  farm-house.  Mrs.  Long  was  ill  for  a  time 
after  her  husband's  death,  and  among  those  who 
helped  her  then  was  Alice  Mackenzie. 

I  wish  I  could  tell  of  Alice  as  she  was,  or  in  fact 
as  she  is  now,  for  she  has  changed  very  little.  The 
winters  spent  in  town  had  not  done  more  than  to 
make  her  a  trifle  more  sedate,  but  she  was  yet  a 
country  girl  in  every  way,  though  developed  into 
a  fine  woman.  There  is  a  woman  in  one  of  the 
stories  of  that  English  writer — Mr.  Charles  Reade 
—  I  like  stories  sometimes — of  whom  Alice  often 
made  me  think,  a  woman  of  good  height  deep- 
chested  and  broad-hipped  and  with  a  splendid 
motion  when  she  walked  or  ran.  Alice  could  run 
well,  and  very  few  women  can  do  that.  I  think 
the  Canadian  girls,  if  not  always  as  bright  as  ours, 
are,  as  a  rule,  clearer-faced  and  are  better  on 
their  feet,  but  this  may  be  only  a  fancy.  I  know 
that  Alice  was  a  fine  girl  and  that  she  and  David 
as  I  have  seen  them  standing  together  made  a 
couple  worth  the  looking  at. 

She   was  a   good   girl,  Alice,  one   without   any 


28 


AN    ODD    SITUATION 


moods  and  witli  a  pleasant  temper  and  one  who 
had  taken  faithful  and  loving  care  of  her  mother 
during  her  long  illness,  for  Mrs.  Mackenzie,  like  Mr. 
Long,  was  now  dead  and  Alice  was  her  father's 
only  real  dependence.  I  don't  know  what  the 
old  man  would  have  done  without  her,  for  the  time 
had  come  when  he  was  no  longer  the  one  who 
could  set  the  pace  in  the  field  for  his  hired  help 
and  when,  even  in  chores  at  home,  he  was  much 
hampered.  His  daughter  was,  in  his  household, 
as  much  of  a  stay  as  David  was  in  ours. 

There  were  one  hundred  and  sixty  acres — just 
a  quarter  section, — in  our  farm  and  it  was  well 
cleared,  only  thirty  acres  being  woodland.  A  good 
deal  of  it  was  in  grass  for  we  kept  a  fair  showing 
of  cattle  and  horses  and  a  few  sheep.  We  raised 
hogs,  too,  and  that  meant  corn.  In  this  respect 
we  were  different  from  Mackenzie,  over  the  line, 
for  he  kept  few  hogs  and  no  sheep  at  all.  He  put 
in  a  good  deal  of  wheat  and  such  grains,  though, 
and  managed  to  make  it  pay,  and  he  had  a  fancy 
for  poultry.  There  were  many  chickens  and 
turkeys  and  geese  on  his  place.  From  our  dining- 
room  windows  we  could  see  Alice  feeding  them 
every  morning.  The  old  man's  farm  was  of  just 
the  same  size  as  ours  and  he  was   counted   one  of 


SHIFTS    AND   CHANGES 


29 


the  solid  men  of  the  neighborhood.  He  did  very 
little  work  himself  nowadays,  for  a  biroken  ankle  had 
left  him  with  the  muscles  strained  so  that  they  never 
got  right  again  about  the  joint,  and  he  went  around 
on  crutches  part  of  the  time.  On  what  he  called 
h's  well  days  he  carried  only  a  cane. 

He  grumbled  a  little  over  his  condition,  particu- 
larly because,  he  said,  he  could  discover  no  man 
he  could  trust  completely  with  the  management  of 
the  farm;  no  hired  man  who  suited  him  could  be 
found,  and  the  problem  was  finally  solved  in  an- 
other way. 

I  always  rather  liked  old  Mackenzi-;.  He  was 
gruff  in  his  ways  but  good-hearted  enough  and 
honest  and  fair.  He  was  canny,  too;  I  suppose 
because  of  the  Scotch  blood  in  him,  and  could 
drive  a  bargain.  He  wore  a  gray  beard  cropped 
close  to  his  face  and  had  keen  gray  eyes  and  always 
wore  a  rough  gray  suit.  He  made  me  think  some- 
times of  .a  crippled  old  gray  dog.  Alice  was  just 
the  apple  of  his  eye.  No  matter  how  rough  with 
others  he  might  be,  he  was  always  gentle  to  her 
and  she  could  do  about  as  she  pleased  with  him. 

The  oldest  person  in  our  house  was  of  quite  a 
different  sort  from  the  one  I  have  described.  Mrs. 
Long,  David's  mother,    if   she   had  been   a  man, 


30 


AN    ODD    SITUATION 


|1( 
1.1 


would  have  been  just  the  opposite  of  old  Mr. 
Mackenzie.  She  was  very  spare  and,  despite  her 
sixt}'  odd  years,  was  seemingly  as  active  as  ever. 
She  was  a  notabje  housekeeper  of  the  down-east 
style — she  came  from  Massachusetts — and  was 
somewhat  given  to  fretting.  She  was  a  wonderful 
cook  and  her  bread  and  biscuit  and  cake  and  pre- 
serves and  pumpkin  and  custard  and  elderberry 
pies,  and  roast  spare-ribs  or  chicken  pie,  or  whole 
New  England  dinners,  were  something  beyond  com- 
parison. We  lived  well;  there  was  no  doubt  of 
that.  The  hired  girl,  Lucinda  Briggs,  had  picked 
up  so  much  of  Mrs.  Long's  skill  that  she  could  cook 
well,  too,  but  she  was  a  crazy  thing  whose  antics 
often  made  us  laugh.  She  was  a  big  girl  with 
light  hair  and  a  generally  mussed-up  look  and  a 
voice  even  out  of  proportion  to  her  size.  She  was 
good-natured,  though,,  and  not  afraid  of  work  and 
strong  as  a  horse  and  faithful,  just  the  sort  of  girl 
to  feed  pigs  or  bring  up  your  calves  after  weaning, 
or  to  be  handy  at  maple-sugar  time  or  about  the 
leach  at  soap-m  iking,, 

And  so  we  buckled  down  to  a  new  life  under 
David's  management  of  the  place,  with  the  same 
old  problem  before  the  farmer,  of  gaining  a  little 
something  more  than  food  and  shelter  as  a  reward 


SHIFTS    AND    CHANGES 


31 


for  each  year  of  hard  and  constant  work,  and  the 
certainty  that  the  surplus,  if  any,  must  be  small. 
On  the  the  other  hand,  the  food  was  certain  to 
be  abundant  and  of  the  best,  and  the  shelter  to  be 
roomy  and  comfortable,  and  there  must  be  the 
crisp,  good  air  of  winter  and  the  bright  things  of 
nature  in  summer  and,  above  all,  the  independence 
which  the  farmer  has  almost  alone.  In  the 
county,  as  old  Hosea  used  to  say:  "One  man  is 
as  good  as  another,  and  generally  a  little  better." 
And  in  the  times  when  nations  are  in  peril  it  is 
always  the   country  which  comes  to  the  rescue. 

We  settled  down  to  the  life  fairly  and  David 
was  full  of  ambition  to  have  the  best  farm  in  the 
county  and  was  taking  an  agricultural  paper  or  two 
and  planning  valorously.  He  had  even  concluded 
— and  that  was  a  great  departure — to  under-drain 
the  fields  nearest  the  creek,  for  one  or  two  of  them 
lay  pretty  flat  up  to  the  crest  of  the  hollow  and, 
after  rain  sometimes,  water  would  stand  in  the 
clogged  dead-furrows  and  there  would  be  patches 
where  the  crop  would  be  sickly  and  thin,  and  all 
this  the  under-draining  would  help.  And  we  built 
a  tool-shed  with  a  lean-to  where  a  team  could  pass 
through,  and,  after  that,  a  plough  wasn't  left 
standing  in  the  furrow  during  rainy  weather  nor  a 


.» „ 


32 


AN   ODD   SITUATION 


m 


m 


harrow  left  beside  the  road.  David  argued  that 
nea'.ness  and  close  care  of  everything  meant  saving 
and  I  agreed  with  him.  Old  Hosea,  though  a  good 
judge  of  crops  and  planting  and  stock  and  a  hard 
worker,  had  been  more  careless.  The  earliest 
settlers',  I've  noticed,  are  generally  that  way. 
They  do  not  value  land  much,  it  having  been  cheap 
and  plenty  when  they  began  tilling,  and  they  do  not 
farm  closely,  because  up  to  these  later  years,  it 
wouldn't  have  paid  them.  But  we — for  I  was 
almost  as  interested  as  David  in  his  plans — 
were  great  farmers.  We  are  "going  to  make 
things  hum,"  as  he  put  it.  Then,  for  a  season, 
thiners  didn't  go  as  we)'.  David  began  to  lose  his 
earnestness  as  to  this  field  or  that  field  or  this  hog 
or  that  heifer,andbe  often  absent-minded.  I  didn't 
know  what  it  meant,  at  first,  the  symptoms  being 
something  out  of  the  common.  For  a  time, 
although  we'd  been  having  dry  weather,  I  thought 
maybe  it  was  malaria.  But  it  was  something  else. 
The  young  man  was  in  love. 


CHAPTER  III. 


LOVE  AND  THE  LINE. 

The  Honeymoon  hangs  over  Borderland, 
As  she  peers  down  through  (he  trees, 
And  her  smile  is  beamingly,  broadly  bland 
Over  something  that  she  sees. 

And  a  gossiping  star  improves  the  chance, 

While  beside  her,  to  disclose, 
With  much  detail  as  to  circumstance, 

What  he  saw  before  she  rose. 

But  never  a  word  for  a  thousand  years 

Will  the  Honeymoon  repeat 
Of  what  she  may  think,  or  has  seen,  or  hears— 

For  the  Honeymoon's  discreet. 

Talts  of  the  Skies 

I  know  very  little  about  love-making  though  I 
have  been  a  married  man.  My  own  marriage, years 
ago,  was  arranged  in  an  orderly  way  and  without 
much  sentiment. 

As  to  David's  affair,  I  knew  almost  nothing  be- 
cause, not    suspecting   what    was  the  matter  with 
him,   I   hadn't    particularly  noticed    what  he  was 
about.     I   knew   that,  for  a  month  or  two,  he  had 
I  33 


34 


AN   ODD   SITUATION 


found  n3ed  of  a  great  many  errands  to  the  Macken- 
zie place  and  that  I  had  seen  him  hurry  across  a 
field  when  AHce's  straw  hat  showed  above  the 
fence  as  she  might  chanpe  to  be  coming  down  the 
road.  I  suppose  the  wooing  must  have  been 
pretty,  as  wooings  go,  for  they  were  both  bright 
people  and — barring  the  temporary  weakness  of 
mind  which  comes  at  courting-time — no  doubt  their 
talk  was  up  to  the  proper  wooing  grade.  V/hat 
the  talk  was,  just  how  David  made  love,  I  never 
knew,  that  being  naturally  a  delicate  subject,  but  I 
do  know  that  he  succeeded  and  that,  from  being 
absent  minded  and  rather  careless  about  work,  he 
suddenly  became  all  alive  and  joyous  and  did  work 
enough  for  two  men  every  day,  in  sheer  exuber- 
ance of  spirit.  I  finally  asked  him  bluntly  what 
had  ailed  him?  "Nothing,"  he  said,  "only  I'm 
going  to  marry  Alice."  The  announcement  rather 
took  me  back;  it  was  unexpected.  I  rallied  enough 
to  tell  him  that  I  was  glad  of  it  and  that  I  didn't 
believe  he  could  have  found  a  better  girl  in  all 
Canada  or  the  United  States  either.  He  agreed 
with  me  very  certainly  on  that  point.  "She  is  the 
sweetest  woman  in  the  world,"  said  he. 

"I  suppose  other  fellows  have  said  that  of  other 
girls  and  been  just  as  earnest  about  it,  as  you  are. 
But  when  did  you  two  agree  to  this.^"' 


m 


LOVE    AND   THE    LINE 


35 


"Three  days  ago,  Jason.  She  knew  before — she 
knew  how  I  felt  about  it,  but  I'd  never  fairly 
asked  her  until  then.  It  was  in  the  barn,  their 
barn,  Jason" — and  his  face  lighted  up  as  he  told  it 
— "both  the  big  doors  were  open,  for  they'd  just 
finished  putting  in  a  load,  and  she  had  come  out  to 
find  her  father.  There  I  saw  her  as  she  was  stand- 
ing in  the  middle  of  the  floor  looking  about.  It 
came  upon  me  then  that  I  would  wait  no  longer. 
I  went  in  from  the  road  to  her  and  we  said  a  few 
words,  about  commonplace  things  and  then  I  told 
her  how  well  she  looked  in  the  soft,  calico  dress 
she  wore  and  she  laughed  and  leaned  back  against 
a  ladder  which  was  standing  by  the  mow.  And  I 
told  her  all  there  was  of  it  and  she  sobered  in  a 
moment  and  said  simply  that  she  had  known  I 
cared— she  couldn't  help  that — and  that  she  loved 
me  very  dearly.  And  there,  Jason,  you  have  the 
story,  at  least  the  end  of  it,  and  we  shall  be  mar- 
ried almost  at  once.  There  is  no  use  in  waiting." 
"And  what  does  old  Mackenzie  say?" 
"I  haven't  been  to  him  yet.  But  he  does  about 
what  Alice  wants  always,  and  he  likes  me,  I  guess. 
If  he  doesn't  agree" — and  David's  face  set  a  little 
■ — "I'll  have  her  anyhow.  But  there'll  be  no 
trouble.    He  is  a  pretty  good  old  man." 


36 


AN   ODD    SITUATION 


And  the  young  people  were  not  mistaken  as  to 
how  old  Mackenzie  would  feel  in  the  matter. 
They  say  that  the  course  of  true  love  never  does 
run  smooth,  but  I  know  better,  for  this  was  true 
love  and  ran  as  smooth  as  the  creek  on  a  level.  \ 
Old  Mr.  Mackenzie  was  a  little  surprised  at  the 
suddeness  of  the  thing  but  that  was  all.  The  old 
man  showed  himself  to  have  sharper  eyes  than  I 
could  boast  for  he  had  noticed  the  progress  of 
affairs  between  the  two  for  some  time  and  it  had 
set  him  thinking.  There  was  no  young  man  in 
the  region  he  would  rather  have  for  a  son-in-law 
than  David,  and  a  son-in-law,  or  at  least  some 
one  besides  himself  abo'it  the  place,  he  really 
needed.  His  ankle  would  not  allow  him  to  move 
about  as  he  wished  and  here  was  a  settlement  of 
the  problem.  It  A'as  a  good  thing  in  a  business  way 
as  well  as  a  good  thing  for  the  young  people.  So 
the  old  man  told  David  that  for  a  young  fellow 
of  his  age  he  thought  him  tolerably  sensible  and 
that,  tbour^h  he  was  not  good  enough  for  Alice,  he 
might  have  her.  David's  mother  was  even  more 
satisfied  with  the  proposed  marriage  than  old 
Mackenzie.     She  was  very  fond  of  Alice. 

So  the  date  for  the  wedding  was  agreed  upon, 
and  the  lovers  were  together  a  good  deal,  as  lovers 


LOVE  AND  THE  LINE 


37 


will  be,  and  we  poked  a  little  fun  at  David,  which 
he  took  good-naturedly.  And  the  days  passed  witli- 
out  further  incident  until  one  evening  old  man 
Mackenzie  came  stumping  over  to  our  house, 
where  Alice  chanced  to  be  already.  She  was  con- 
sulting over  something  with  Mrs.  Long,  and  David 
and  I  were  sitting  on  the  stoop  smoking.  Macken- 
zie took  a  chair,  and  a  little  later  the  two  women 
joined   us.     Then  the  old  man  broke  out: 

"What  am  I  going  to  do,  living  in  the  house 
over  there  alone?" 

Nobody  seemed  to  know  what  to  say,  though 
David  mumbled  out  something  about  a  house- 
keeper, and  Alice  said  very  earnestly  that  he  should 
not  be  negle'^ted. 

"'A  housekeeper!'"  snorted  the  old  man.  "I'll 
have  none  of  them!  And  I  am  not  going  to  live 
alone — mind  that!  David,  I've  come  over  to 
make  you  a  proposition.  You've  a  good  enongh 
farm;  but  one  big  place  can  be  run  better  than  two 
little  ones.  I'll  not  give  up  what  I  own  entirely, 
while  I'm  above  ground,  but  I'll  sell  you  the  farm. 
I'll  take  a  mortgage  on  it,  and  I'll  make  a  will  so 
that  the  mortgage  will  go  to  Alice,  and,  for  the 
interest,  I'll  live  with  my  daughter.  And  maybe 
I  won't  be  altogether  useless,  bad  as  the  ankle   is, 


1-;. 


38 


AN   ODD   SITUATION 


1!        '! 


1'  h 


and  Jason  and  myself  will  smoke  our  pipes  to- 
gether, and  you'll  start  off  in  the  beginning  with 
a  big  family,  as  well  as  a  big  farm,  on  your 
hands.  You'll  be  a  responsible  pair  of  young 
people.     What  d'ye  say  to  it?" 

There  couldn't  well  be  but  one  answer  to  such 
an  offer  a<;  that,  and  David  closed  with  it  gladly. 
It  would  be  more  pleasant  for  Alice;  it  would  give 
us  a  grcdt  farm — and  farmers  like  other  people, 
have  their  pride  of  property.  And  so  it  all  came 
to  pass.  The  deed  was  made  and  the  mortgage 
given,  and  David  came  into  possession  of  a  farm 
of  three  hundred  and  twenty  acres;  and  the  young 
people  took  to  planning. 

I  understand  from  those  who  have  tried  it  that 
there  is  much  comfort  in  the  pretty  scheming 
of  lovers  before  marriage.  I  never  experimented 
much  myself,  but  I  guess  there  isn't  much  doubt 
about  the  thing.  The  pair  are  in  the  sunshine  and 
their  eyes  are  blinded.  They  can  divine  ways  of 
securing  all  good  fortune,  and,  as  for  contingencies 
— there  are  no  such  things.  This  couple,  being 
hopeful  and  strong,  and  so  far  not  unfortunate  in 
their  lives,  may  nave  planned  a  little  more  than 
do  most  young  people. 

They   agreed  that,    while   they  would   not,  of 


^■■' 


LOVE   AND   THE    LINE 


39 


course,  be  disturbed  in  the  possession  of  the  Ca- 
nadian farm,  they  should  not,  with  such  an  estate 
as  David  now  controlled,  be  merely  satisfied  to 
live  in  comfort,  but  that  they  should  try  to  pay  off 
the  mortgage.  Each  thought  of  the  time  to  come, 
and,  though  neither  mentioned  it,  no  doubt  both 
David  and  Alice,  had  in  mind,  in  a  vague  sort  of 
way,  the  day  whe.i  there  would  be  others  to  care 
for,  and  when  girls  and  boys  would  cost  money,  as 
so  many  good  things  do.  "It  is  a  big  place,"  said 
David,  "and  it  is  a  good  one.  With  the  farms 
united  I  believe  I  can  manage  so  that  we  shall 
make  money.  We'll  take  a  great  pride,  dear,  in 
lifting  that  mortgage,  and  your  father  will,  I 
know,  take  a  pride,  too,  in  what  we  are  trying  to 
do.  He  can  leave  the  money  as  he  wishes.  It 
will  come  to  you  anyhow,  I  suppose,  but  that 
doesn't  make  any  difference.  We'll  feel  more  re- 
spect for  ourselves  by  acting  just  as  if  your  father 
was   the  hardest  sort  of  money-lender." 

And  Alice  agreed  with  David,  and  they  had  long 
talks  as  to  further  improvements  and  the  uniting  of 
the  households  and  the  changes  to  be  made  gener- 
ally. The  farm  was  all  one.  They  did  not  care 
where  the  line  came.  What  to  them  at  this  time 
was  Canada,  or  any  other  country? 


Illii:^: 


40 


AN  ODD  SITUATION 


iili;':! 


illlil!         ;;| 


Speaking  of  the  line,  it  is  a  queer  thing.  The 
two  countries  have  no  middle  ground  between  them, 
such  as  I  have  read  there  once  was  between  Eng- 
land and  Scotland,  a  strip  they  called  "the  Marches" 
and  where  there  was  continual  fighting  and  turmoil. 
The  line  here  is  an  invisible  thing.  The  two 
countries  touch.  A  daisy  may  grow  in  Canada  and 
lean  over  and  bloom  in  the  United  States,  and  of 
the  four  little  eggs  in  a  blue  bird's  nest  two  may  lie 
in  either  land.  What  a  vacillating  th  ag  ■<...  line 
is,  too!  As  it  leaves  the  Pacific  Ocean,  it  seems 
to  have  resolute  intentions,  but  it  changes  its 
mind.  It  follows  the  straight  course  east  until  it 
reaches  the  great  inland  sea,  Superior,  and  then 
it  slips  into  the  water,  like  a  beaver,  and  does 
not  seek  the  land  again  for  hundreds  of  weary 
miles.  It  follows  the  lake  center  and  threads  St. 
Mary's  river  and  buries  i^^self  again  in  Lake 
Huron  and  the  beautiful  St.  Clair  river  and  gor  , 
through  Lake  Erie  and  down  the  Niagara  ov 
the  falls,  and  seeks,  through  Lake  Ontario,  the 
head-waters  of  the  big  St.  Lawrence.  It  has  then 
had  bath  enough  and  the  water  is  deserted  and 
away  it  goes  across  broad  meadow-lands  and 
wanders  to  the  east  and  north,  and  so  to  the 
Atlantic.     That  is  the  line.     It  has  no  character. 


on 


^. 


LOVE  AND  THE  LINE 


41 


And  upon  each  side  of  this  queer  line  our  farm 
was  now.  Part  of  the  way  the  road  ran  between 
the  two  divisions  of  the  place,  but  it  turned  aside 
at  one  point  because  of  the  lay  of  the  land  and  the 
creek  went  for  a  distance  through  what  had  been 
one  of  the  Mackenzie  fields.    This  was  a  conven- 


o     5 


(jp-ttel 


64/^1^^^ 


/^oM>  ^AV 


e 


o 


Janon'H  Map  of  tlio  Noijj;hl)()rhoo(l. 
ience  in  many  respects.  In  a  general  way,  the 
parts  of  the  farm  as  it  was  now,  sloped  upward 
from  each  other,  though  much  of  the  land  was 
level.  The  houses  were  close  together,  with  only 
the   roads    and  yards   between    them.     I   cannot 


t 


42 


AN    ODD    SITUATION 


draw  a  thing  well  nor  make  a  picture  nor  any  sort 
of  outline  that  can  be  easily  understood,  but  I  ha^'e 
done  my  best,  at  least,  and  tried  here  to  give  an 
idea  of  the  neighborhood.  So  things  were  when 
David  and  Alice  were  doing  their  planning,  and  so 
when  they  were  married,  They  decided  to  live  in 
the  house  on  the  American  side,  and  the  one  Mac- 
kenzie had  lived  in  was  given  up  to  Mackenzie's 
hired  man  John  Cross,  who  had  a  wife.  We  still 
needed  his  help.  A  happier  or  more  hopeful 
young  couple  than  David  and  Alice  I  never  saw. 
They  didn't  know  all  that  was  coming. 


CHAPTER   IV. 

A  PECULIAR  NEIGHBOR. 

A  load  of  hay  in  the  crowded  street, 

A  whiff  of  the  scent  of  clover, 
A  change  of  thought,  vague,  incomplete, 

A  living  a  young  life  over. 

A  day  in  August,  and  clouds  of  white. 

A  shifting  of  light  and  shadow, 
The  hum  of  bees  and  the  martin's  flight, 

The  meadow  larks  and  the  meadow. 
Brown  arn-sof  men  and  the  yellow  green 

Of  the  svvaths,the  steady  swinging 
Of  forms  of  laborers,  strong  and  lean, 
The  scythes  with  their  steely  ringing. 
*  *  *  * 

The  roar  of  trade  and  the  newsboy's  call— 

And  the  dream  of  a  moment's  over! 
' Twas  a  brain-wave  came  though  the  nose,  and  all 
From  a  whiff  of  the  scent  of  clover! 

— Away  Back. 

There  lay  the  farm,  broad  and  fair,  extending  on 
both  sides  the  Hne,  and  a  good  thing  for  a  man 
with  an  eye  for  crops  to  look  upon.  Haying  was 
nearly  over,  and  harvesting  was  beginning,  and  there 
was  plenty  of  work  to  do. 

~  4ii 


44 


AN    ODD    SITUATION 


M,!:i: 


John  Cros!5,  though  a  httle  man — he  had  rather 
weak  eyes  and  a  pug  nose,  and  whitish-yellow  hair 
— was  a  good  worker,  but  we  needed  more  help 
and  hired  another  man,  who  came  along  looking  for 
some  such  job  in  harvest-time.  Never  did  men  go 
at  the  Fall  work  on  a  farm  with  more  vim  or  more 
good  spirits. 

The  crops  promised  reasonably  well.  This 
bigger  undertaking  under  one  head  was  a  branching 
out  for  all  of  us,  and  we  went  at  the  thing  with  a 
rush.  It  wasn't  long  before  those  two  barns,  old 
Mackenzie's, or,  rather,  the  one  which  had  been  his, 
and  our  own,  were  crammed  full  of  what  a  farmer 
works  for.  On  the  hay  side  of  the  barn  floor  they 
were  full  clear  up  to  the  purline  plates,  and  on  the 
grain  side,  over  the  stables  and  over  the  floor  it- 
self, they  were  about  as  full.  It  was  a  good  thing 
cO  stand  on  one  of  the  floors  and  look  about. 
Maybe  the  smell  of  things  affects  me  more  than 
it  does  most  people,  but  I  do  like  to  stand  in  a 
barn  along  in  the  fall,  when  the  crops  are  just  in, 
and  there  sniff  and  sniff,  just  as  a  dog  does  out 
in  the  fields  when  the  wind  brings  along  some 
scent  which  pleases  him.  It  seems,  somehow,  as 
if  you  got  an  idea  just  then  of  all  of  nature's 
richness  heaped  together.     There  is  the  smell  of 


A    PECULIAR    NEIGHBOR 


45 


the  clover  and  the  timothy  over  everything,  and 
then  all  the  richness  of  the  odor  of  the  grain 
sheaves,  and  you  think,  as  you  draw  in  the  perfume 
through  your  nostrils,  that  you  can  tell  them  all 
apart.  May  be  you  do  not  really;  maybe  you  im- 
agine it,  just  because  you  know  them  so  well  sepa- 
rately and  that  there  they  are  before  you;  but  the 
outcome  of  them  all  together  is  with  you,  and 
your  senses  get  half  drunk  upon  it.  There  are  other 
things,  of  course — other  odors — some  of  which  I 
have  found  mentioned  in  books,  which  are,  maybe, 
more  striking  in  themselves  than  any  of  these  air 
flavors  of  the  barn,  but  they  are  another  matter. 
There  are  roses  and  violets  and  pinks  and  all  the 
things  you  read  about  in  poetry,  and  they  are  all 
good  in  their  way.  They  are  good,  but  it  seems 
to  me  that  the  people  who  make  pretty  verses  have 
missed  what  are  the  finest  of  delights  even  in  that 
way.  Did  you  ever  thrust  your  nose  down  into 
the  crest  of  wild  phlox  in  the  lowlands?  Did  you 
ever  hold  a  flag  blossom  close  to  your  face  and 
then  draw  in  its  scent,  or  a  liverwort  flower  just 
when  its  color  is  the  richest,  or  did  you  ever  lean 
over  a  bin  of  apples  and  catch  the  smell  of  them  ? 
If  you  have,  then,  maybe,  you  have  been  lifted  in  a 
way  and  have  thought  of  things  you  had  forgotten. 


r 


46 


AN   ODD    SITUATION 


But   the    flavor    of    the   barn    is    good    enough. 

The  barns  were  full  and  all  had  gone  well  in 
the  filling  of  them.  We  had  two  teams  and  one 
was  kept  on  the  Mackenzie  place  and  the  other  on 
our  own.  Old  man  Mackenzie  could  not  do  much 
work,  but  he  took  an  interest  in  what  was  going 
on,  and  his  advice  was  good.  The  old  man  knew 
his  farm  by  heart — he  knew  how  much  every  acre 
had  been  cropped  and  what  the  chances  were  for 
any  s'-rt  of  seeding. 

And  Alice  made  the  best  housekeeper  I  ever 
saw.  Of  course  she'd  had  a  good  deal  of  experi- 
ence after  her  mother's  death,  but  she  must  have 
ovv'ned  a  gift  in  that  direction,  anyhow,  or  she 
couldn't  have  done  so  well.  There  are  hosts  of 
farmer's  wives  who  can  provide  good  meals  if  only 
an  abundance  is  given  them,  and  who  know  how 
to  make  good  soap,  or  do  all  this  or  that,  but  there 
are  few  of  them,  I  imagine,  who  think  deeply 
enough  to  systematize  their  work,  and  who,  while 
they  are  never  behindhand,  yet  manage  somehow 
to  have  everything  always  neat  about  the  house 
and  yard  and  a  sort  of  trimness  to  it.  But  Alice 
had  the  gift  and  had  Mrs.  Long,  to  help  her  and 
Lucinda  Briggs'  strong  arms,  and  I  tell  you  it  was 
a  comfort  to  go  into  that  place  when  a  day's  work 


A    PECULIAR    NEIGHBOR 


47 


was  done.  We  were  comfortably  fixed,  and  no 
mistake.  David,  I  think,  fell  more  and  more  in 
love  with  his  wife  as  he  got  to  know  her  better. 
There  are  always  two  women  a  man  marries  if  he 
marries  at  all;  one  is  the  woman  he  thinks  he  is 
getting,  the  other  is  the  one  he  really  gets.  And 
in  David's  case  it  was  satisfactory  either  way,, 

They  told  old  man  Mackenzie  what  they  had 
decided  about  the  mortgage,  and  Alice  laughed 
when  she  made  him"  understand  that  they  concluded 
to  look  upon  him  as  the  meanest  kind  of  a  money- 
lender.    The  old  man  laughed  too. 

West  from  us,  right  across  the  road  and  reach- 
ing up  to  the  boundary  line,  was  the  Vincent  fa  n. 
Vincent  was  a  man  of  decent  standing,  a  farmer 
who  did  as  well  as  the  average,  or  perhaps  a  little 
better,  but  who  wasn't  what  you'd  call  a  good- 
natured  person.  He  was  a  tall,  gaunt  man,  with 
small  eyes  and  a  regularly  sour  look.  He  was  an 
envious  sort  of  man.  I  remember  well  one  morn- 
ing when  he  came  slouching  along  the  road  and 
stopped,  leaning  up  against  our  fence,  with  his 
arms  resting  on  its  top.  I  was  pottering  over 
something  in  the  yard,  mowing  around  some  cur- 
rant bushes,  I  believe,  when  he  spoke  to  me: 

"Well,  how  are  things  getting  on.^" 


48 


AN   ODD    SITUATION 


m 


"Pretty  well,"  said  I. 

"When  d'ye  begin  thrashing?" 

"I  don't  know;  not  till  some  time  next  month, 
I  guess." 

"Where  d'ye  expect  to  sell?" 

"Don't  know  that,  either,  but  David  has  some 
sort  of  deal  on  about  the  spare  grain  with  a  man 
down  in  Magone.  I  guess  we'll  sell  it  there,  as 
usual." 

"I  thought  that  old  man  Mackenzie  always  sold 
his  grain  in  Rodney?" 

So  he  did,  but,  you  see,  it's  different  now  that 
we've  got  the  two  farms  in  one.  It  would  be 
foolish  to  separate  the  crops.  We  couldn't  do  as 
well." 

Vincent  thought  a  minute  then  mumbled  out, 
"H-m-m,  yes;  I  see,"  and  went  shambling  down 
the  road.  I  didn't  think  much  of  it  at  the  time, 
but  I  thought  a  good  deal  about  that  talk  a  few 
months  later. 

It  was  getting  along  in  the  season  and  there 
was  little  to  be  done  in  the  way  of  crop-making, 
with  one  exception.  Over  on  the  Mackenzie  side 
was  one  field  where  there  was  a  second  growth  of 
clover,  which  would  pay  for  the  cutting  and  curing, 
and  we  went  at  it,  with  good  weather  for  the  work. 


A    PKCULIAR    NEIGHBOR 


49 


We  were  delayed,  though,  when  the  cutting,'  was 
about  half  done,  and  so  we  got  the  curing  clover 
together  hurriedly  and  into  hay-cocks  of  the  old- 
fashioned  sort  we  made  before  mowing  machines 
were  invented  and  when  the  swaths  were  spread 
with  a  pitchfork  and  got  together  finally  with  a 
hand-rake.  What  fun  we  had  when  I  was  a  boy 
as  the  last  forkful  of  a  hay-cock  went  up  to  the 
man  loading,  and  the  ground  was  bared  where  the 
hay  had  been.  There  was  certain  to  be  a  big 
meadow-mole  there — sometimes  four  or  five  of 
them — and  the  boy  "raking  behind  the  wagon," 
as  they  called  it,  was  on  hand  then,  ready  for  the 
slaughter. 

He  would  break  his  rake  sometimes  in  his  ex- 
citement and  then  there  would  be  an  interview 
with  his  father.  A  few  twigs  generally  grew  about 
the  stumps  left  in  the  field,  and  any  father  with 
a  jack-knife  could  trim  one  of  these  for  use  in  no 
time.  So,  sometimes,  the  death  of  the  mole  would 
be  avenged.  Occasionally,  instead  of  the  moles, 
there  would  be  found  one  of  their  enemies  be- 
neath the  haycock,  a  garter  snake  with  a  suspi- 
cious bulge  about  his  middle,  or,  maybe,  a  long 
black  snake,  active  and  full  of  fight.  If  it  were 
a  garter  snake  the  hired    man,  who   generally  did 


50 


AN    ODD    SITUATION 


the  pitching,  would  seize  it  by  the  tail  and  per- 
form the  great  country  trick  of  "snapping  its  head 
off."  If  it  were  the  other  kind  the  pitchfork 
would  prove  handy.  It  is  better,  of  course,  the 
way  we  make  hay  now,  but  there  is  no  quality  to 
it  ana  one  man  is  about  as  good  as  another.  It 
took  a  fellow  with  stuff  in  him  to  swing  a  scythe 
over  a  wide  swath  all  day  long  and  be  in  proper 
fettle  when  night  came  on. 

I  miss  the  old  ways.  The  whirr  of  the  machines 
isn't  half  as  good  in  one's  ears  as  the  singing  of 
the  blades  through  grass.  But  I'm  ge^^ting  away 
from  my  story. 

As  I  was  saying,  we  were  delayed  in  tne  clover- 
cutting,  but  the  weather  was  good  and  we  got  it 
all  down  finally  and  cured  and  were  ready  to  put 
it  away.  Both  barns  were  full  and  David  con- 
cluded that  the  only  thing  to  do  was  to  stack  the 
hay  just  where  it  could  be  used  most  handily  for 
the  vv^inter  feeding.  The  sheep,  in  winter,  were 
sheltered  under  a  big  shed  a  little  way  from  the 
barn,  on  our  place,  and  so  it  was  decided  to 
make  the  stack  close  by  the  shed.  We  made  a  good 
bottom  with  rails  and  began  the  hauling.  David 
went  to  Magone  the  day  this  work  began,  and 
John  Cross    and   I  went    at   the  work.     We    were 


A    PKCULIAR    NEIC.IIliOR 


51 


coming  from  the  Mackenzie  place  with  the  second 
load  when  we  met  Vincent,  who  came  up  and  passed 
us  on  a  buckboard  he  used  in  driving'  about  the 
country.  He  drew  up  his  horse  and  talked  a  little 
while  in  his  sour  way  about  the  clover,  saying 
that  he  thought  pea  straw  better  for  wintering 
sheep,  and  then  drove  on.  He  did  not  stop,  I 
noticed,  when  he  reached  his  own  place,  but  kept 
ahead  on  the  road  to  Magone,  the  same  one 
David   had  taken  an  hour  or  two  before. 

"Guess  Vincent  must  be  going  to  town,"  said 
Cross. 

"It  doesn't  make  much  difference  where  he  is 
going,"  I  answered.  "Wherever  it  is  he'll  turn  sour 
any  milk  he  looks  at.  He's  one  of  the  surliest 
men    lever  saw.      And  he  doesn't  like   David.' 

"Of  course  he  doesn't.  He's  had  a  grudge 
against  him  since  David  made  him  take  back  the 
potatoes  we  bought  for  seed.  They  wan't  pink- 
eyes at  all.  I  wish  he'd  say  something  to  me. 
I'd  like  to  get  at  him." 

I  laughed.  John  Cross,  was  about  as  insignifi- 
cant a  man,  physically,  as  ever  managed  to  do  a 
day's  work  on  a  farm.  He  wouldn't  weigh  over  130 
pounds,  and  he  was  rather  loose-jointed  at  that. 
But  he'd  got  an  impression  that  he  was  one  of  the 


•ii;: 


:'l;i;l 


5^ 


AN    ODD    SITUATI(Jl4 


most  dangerous  men  in  the  community  when  it 
came  to  a  square  fight,  and  that  it  was  his  duty  to 
be  ready  to  fight  off-hand  whenever  he  or  any  of 
his  friends  might  be  imposed  upon.  The  wonder 
was  that  he  hadn't  been  crippled  by  somebody. 
He  had  come  home  from  raisings  and  town  meet- 
ings, once  or  twice,  a  littls  the  worse  for  wear,  but 
he  didn't  seem  to  learn  anything.  He  would 
fight,  or  at  least  get  ready  to  fight,  at  the  drop  of 
the  hat.  I  never  saw  anyone  else  like  him — such 
a  bantam! 

We  got  along  with  the  hauling  pretty  well,  and 
by  the  middle  of  the  afternoon  we  had  what  be- 
gan to  look  something  like  a  stack.  Clover  is 
easier  to  handle  than  timothy  and  much  better  in 
loading.  It  hangs  together  so  that  tb'^re  is  no 
trouble  about  the  binding  of  the  courses,  and  you 
can  carry  as  big  a  load  as  you  want  your  team  to 
draw.  We  were  just  coming  out  of  the  Mackenzie 
field  and  turning  into  the  highway  with  a  load  on 
the  style  of  which  I  rather  prided  myself,  when  I 
noticed  Vincent's  sorrel  coming  down  the  road,  and 
noticed,  too,  that  there  was  another  man  with 
Vincent  on  the  buckboard.  I  paid  no  attention 
to  them  till  they  drew  up  beside  us. 

The   man  sitting   with   Vincent    was   a   rather 


A    PECULIAR    NEIGHBOR 


53 


slouchy-looking  fellow,  with  sharp  eyes,  and  was 
not  dressed  like  a  farmer.  He  was  not  what  you 
would  call  well-dressed,  but  you  could  see  that 
he  came  from  town.  He  jumped  off  the  buck-board 
and  stood  in  front  of  the  horses,  so  that  they 
scopped. 

"What  is  your  name.!"'  he  called    out  to  me. 

"My  name  is  Jason  Moore,  and  you'd  better  get 
out  of  the  way  of  the  team." 

The  man  laughed:  "I  don't  think  I  will  just 
now,"  he  answered.  "I  want  to  know  what  you 
mean  by  bringing  that  hay  across  the  line.!"" 

"Who  are  you.^"' 

"Well,  I  don't  mind  telling  you  that  my  name 
is  Gaherty,  and  that  I'm  a  United  States  officer. 
You  are  hauling  Canadian  hay  into  the  United 
States  without  paying  duty.  I'm  told  you've  been 
doing  the  thing  already.  Now,  you  drive  ahead 
across  the  middle  of  the  road  so  far  that  your 
horse's  feet  touch  the  grass  on  this  side,  and  I'll 
seize  the  whole   outfit!     That's  all." 

John  Cross  began  to  take  off  his  coat. 


CHAPTER  V. 


THEY  DISCUSS  THINGS. 

"Kape  off  the  grass!"  the  copper  said, 
"Ye  little  spalpeen,  don't  ye  see 
The  wooden  sign  forninst  yer  knee? 
'•It's  shtuck  up  there  fur  to  be  read! 
Ye  needn't  shtand  there;  ye  ill-bred 
Gossoon,  and  rowl  your  tongue  at  me! 
Kape  off  the  grass! 

Bedad,  O'll  loikely  break  yer  head 
Av  ye  don't  make  yerself  less  free 
When  frayquintin'  the  park!"  said  he. 
"O'ill  make  ye  wish  that  ye  wor  dead! 

Kape  off  the  grass!" 

Rondeaux  in   Urbe. 

What  could  I  do?  There  I  was  on  the  lead  of 
hay,  and  there  was  this  strange  man  below,  and 
there  was  John  Cross  taking  off  his  coat !  I  knew 
— I  could  not  tall  why;  there  was  something  in  his 
manner  I  suppose — that  the  stranger  was  telling 
the  truth;  that  he  was  really  a  customs  officer,  with 
the  proper  authority  from  somewhere,  and  that  we 
would  be  wise  to  be  careful.  It  showed  in  his 
way.     But  John  Cross,  I  knew,  could  not  see  thai. 

54 


THEY    DISCUSS   THINGS 


55 


He  only  felt  that  a  stranger  was  attempting  an  ex- 
traordinary and  what  seemed  to  him  a  most  inso- 
lent thing,  and  that  there  ought  to  be  a  fight.  And 
he  was  going  to  give  a  chance  for  it,  right  off,  in 
his  own  absurd  and  useless  way.  It  could  end 
only  in  trouble  for  us.  That  was  what  flashed 
through  my  mind  as  I  sat  up  there  on  the  front  of 
that  load  of  hay.  I  yelled  out  to  John  Cross,  and 
just  from  force  of  habit  he  paid  attention  in  a 
second: 

"Take  care  of  the  lines!" 

They  call  them  "reins"  in  most  of  the  books  I 
have  read,  but  in  the  country  we  call  them  "lines." 
As  I  spoke  I  threw  them  down  and  he  jumped  for 
them,  lest  the  horscs  should  run  away.  He 
gathered  them  up  and  stood  there,  coatless  as  he 
was,  as  I  slid  down  from  the  load  and  stood  beside 
him. 

"Look  here,  John,"  I  said,  "I  don't  want  you  to 
say  a  word  nor  do  a  thing  just  now.  If  I  want 
you  I'll  call  on  you.  You  just  hang  onto  the 
lines  and  don't  let  the  horses  get  the  start  of  you. 
1  don't  know  what  all  this  thing  is,  but  I  do  know 
that  we'll  get  at  the  right  of  it.      Leave  it  to  me." 

John  Cross  nodded  rather  sullenly,  and  then 
I  turned  to  the  man: 


56 


AN    ODD    SITUATION 


i:i, 


"I  don't  quite  understand,  Mr.  Gaherty.  I  sup- 
pose you're  an  officer,  but  I'd  like  to  be  sure. 
Will  you  please  show  me  your  papers?" 

He  showed  me  his  papers  and  then  I  knew  all 
right  enough  that  he  was  really  a  customs  officer, 
that  he  represented  the  United  States,  and  that, 
for  the  present  at  least,  it  would  be  very  foolish  to 
oppose  him  in  any  way.  Besides,  I  expected 
David  home  any  moment.  I  knew,  well  enough, 
that  Vincent  had  made  all  the  trouble,  but  I  could 
not  prove  it,  and  so  I  said  nothing  to  him.  I  spoke 
to  Mr,  Gaherty: 

"I'm  only  a  hired  man  here.  I  don't  know  much 
about  it.  I  only  know  that  we  are  decent  people, 
who  don't  want  to  violate  the  law,  whatever  it 
may  be.  But  the  farm  is  Mr.  Long's,  who  has 
just  gone  to  Magone,  and  I'd  rather  leave  it  to 
him.  He  ought  to  be  back  soon.  Meanwhile  I'll 
leave  the  load  just  as  it  is.  I  don't  want  to  make 
trouble." 

"You're  a  sensible  man,"  said  Mr.  Gaherty.  "I 
can't  wait,  though,  for  your  boss  to  come  back.  I 
may  be  around  in  the  morning.  But  let  me  warn 
you:  This  is  the  line  between  C^inada  and  the 
United  States.  Don't  violate  the  law  by  crossing 
it  with  anything  dutiable." 


THEY    DISCUSS    THINGS 


57 


And  then  he  cHmbed  into  the  buckboard  with 
Vincent,  who  had  an  evil  smile  on  his  face  all  the 
time,  and  the  two  rode  off  to  the  farmer's  house, 
which  was  in  full  sight  of  ours  and  from  which  the 
load  of  hay  as  it  now  stood  could  be  plainly  seen. 

We  unhitched  the  horses.  I  told  John  Cross  to 
take  them  to  the  barn  and  they — man  and  horses 
— went  tramping  ofi  up  the  road.  As  for  me,  I  sat 
down  on  the  wagon-tongue,  close  to  the  hay,  and 
waited.  I  knew  that  David  must  be  back  pretty 
soon,  and  I  wanted  to  be  the  first  to  tell  him  of 
what  had  happened.  I  felt  how  it  must  affect  the 
outcome  of  his  big  new  venture,  and  I  wanted  to 
put  the  situation  to  him  mildly  and  reasonably,  so 
that  he  would  do  nothing  rash  or  inconsiderate.  I 
had  not  to  sit  there  a  great  while.  I  saw  a  spot  of 
dust  away  down  the  road,  and  as  it  came  nearer  I 
saw  that  it  was  the  team  and  David.  I  braced 
myself  for  the  explanation  and  was  a  little  nervous 
about  it.     He  drove  up  and  called  out  heartily: 

"Hello,  Jason!  How  are  things  going.^  That's 
a  good-looking  stack,  so  far.  But  what's  hap- 
pened.^ Where  are  the  horses.-*  Have  you  had  a 
breakdown .?" 

I  told  him  there  had  been  no  breakdown,  but 
something  had  happened  a  little  out  of  the   com- 


m 


58 


AN    ODD    SITUATION 


men:  "It  seems,  David,"  said  I,  "that  you  have  a 
queer  sort  of  a  farm.     You  can't  drive  all  over  it." 

"What  do  you  mean.^"  he  said  "What's  the 
matter.?" 

And  then  I  told  him  of  all  we  had  done  and  of 
what  had  taken  place.  He  seemed  a  trifle  dazed 
at  first,  and,  after  I  had  got  through,  had  nothing 
to  say  for  a  time.     Then  he  broke  out: 

"They  mean  to  say,  do  they,  that  I  cannot  move 
things  about  on  my  own  farm  ?  They  mean  to  say, 
that,  because  I  have  marrijd  a  Canadian  girl,  I 
must  be  ruined!  Of  course,  I  understand  that 
Vincent  is  at  the  bottom  of  it  but  that  doesn't 
matter.  He  is  nothing.  He  is  merely  a  vicious 
man  who  has  a  chance  to  gratify  a  spite.  I  never 
thought  of  it  before,  but  I  suppose  that,  as  the  lands 
are,  they  really  can  bother  us.  It  is  pret'  /  hard, 
Jason.     What  shall  we  do.''" 

I  told  him  that  I  didn't  know.  I  said.  "They 
are  here  upon  us.  That  is  all,  and  I  guess  they're 
all  right,  so  far  as  the  law  goes.  The  only  ques- 
tion is,  what  are  you  to  do.?  It  is  a  puzzling  sort 
of  thing.  It  appears  to  me,  if  I  were  you,  I'd  let 
the  load  of  hay  stay  where  it  is  and  figure  on  the 
thing  a  little.  You  know  that  something  very 
serious  has   happened,  you    know  that  you    can't 


THEY    DISCUSS    THINGS 


59 


buck  against  the  law,  though  you  never  thought  of 
that  when  you  married  Ahce  Mackenzie  and  took 
old  Mackenzie's  farm.      But  there  it  is!" 

The  great,  hulking,  handsome  young  fellow, 
with  his  troubled  face,  looked  at  me  and  laughed 
in  a  senseless  sort  of  way: 

"Yes?"  he  said,    "I    suppose   you're  right.     And 
I  guess  what  you  say  is  the  only  thing  to  do— that 
is,  inquire  into  the  situation  and   then  be  as   sharp 
and  adroit  and  wise  as   possible.      But,    you  see, 
Jason,  I'm  a  httle  broken  up.      I  thought  I    had  a 
sure  thing.    I  thought  I  was  a  mighty  smart  fellow, 
with  lots  of  good  luck,  and  that  I'd  got  the  dearest 
woman  in  the    world,  and,    right  on   top  of  that, 
one    of   the  biggest  chances    possible    for    making 
money  matters  easy;  of  making  things  pleasant  for 
her    and    of   caring,   as    they    should   be  cared  for 
through   all   their   growing   years,  for  the  children 
who    may  come    to    us.      I    don't    know  anything 
about   children.      I  do  know,   though,    that   when 
they  come,  the  woman   is  wrapped  up  in  them  and 
that   the  best  way  to    serve  her  is  to    provide  for 
their  welfare.     And  so  I've  thought    about   money 
and   the   children,  as,  it  seems  to  me,  a  man  who 
cares    for    his    wife    should    always  do.      And  it  is 
money  and  success  in  my  humble  way—no,  it  isn't 


6o 


AN    ODD    SITUATION 


humble;  the  farmers  are  the  biggest  of  them  all — 
that  I  have  cared  for  since  Alice  and  I  were  mar- 
ried. And  now  comes  this  thing— the  man  Gaherty 
is  nothing;  he  is  but  the  agent  of  this  big  some- 
thing that  bothers  us  along  the  line — and  he,  no 
doubt,  is  doing  the  best  he  can.  He  may  be  in 
other  things  a  good  man  or  a  bad  man.  That 
doesn't  count.      What  are  we  Lo  do.?" 

I  couldn't  answer  him.  How  could  I.-*  Here 
we  were  all  innocent  and  unconscious;  two  families 
blended  together,  and  with  all  the  force  of  one 
great  government  launched,  upon  us  to  prevent 
our  living  prosperously  nnd  in  happiness.  And  I 
knew,  though  I  did  not  say  it,  that  one  government 
meant  two;  that  if  the  United  States  custom-house 
officers  were  after  us,  those  from  the  Canadian 
side  would  follow  naturally,  as  things  were  then 
adjusted,  and  that  our  troubles  were  but  begun. 
I  thought  a  long  time  before  I  ventured  to  say  a 
word: 

"Keep  cool,  David,"  I  said.  "After  all  it's  only 
an  odd  situation,  one  that  belongs  only  to  a  narrow 
strip  of  people  laid  across  the  continent  like  a 
string.  Surely,  we  can  meet  that  puzzle,  it  is  such 
a  little  one." 

He   laughed    out,    rather    harshly,     for     him: 


THEY    DISCUSS    THINGS 


6i 


"You  speak  without  thinking,"  he  said.  "It  is 
not  merely  a  string  of  people  laid  from  sea  to  sea. 
Of  course  we  who  are  upon  the  line  feel  most 
sharply  the  hard  burden.  We  can  each  open  our 
two  eyes,  and  see  what  is  all  so  wrong  and  it  is 
we  who,  thoughtlessly — as  I  have  done  in  the 
agreement  about  the  farms — must  most  often  wan- 
der into  trouble,  but  our  misfortunes  are  only  the 
accident  of  being  where  we  are  and  the  other 
farmer,  or  any  other  man,  beyond  us  feels  it,  just 
the  same,  and  never  knows  it." 

"That  may  be,"  I  said,  "but  you  see,  David, 
it  doesn't  matter  just  now.  What  we  have  to  con- 
sider is  what  to  do  with  the  load  of  hay.-*  If  we 
bring  it  across,  I  know  we  will  be  jumped  upon, 
and  there  goes  the  load  of  hay  and,  maybe,  the 
wagon  and  horses!  It  is  on  the  Canadian  side, 
now,  and  the  stack  is  on  the  American  side.  But, 
if  you  want  to  let  it  stay  as  it  is,  I  can  shape  up 
the  stack  a  little  so  that  no  hurt  will  come  if  it 
rains  to-night  and  then  you  w  ill  have  time  to  do 
a  little  figuring.  How  does  that  strike  you.?  You 
agree  that  we  are  helpless  for  the  time.  Why 
not  leave  the  load  as  it  is,  let  me  fix  the  stack, 
and  then,  after  supper,  we  can  talk  with  old  man 
Mackenzie  and  decide  what  we  shall  do,'*  Isn't 
that  the  better  way.?" 


62 


AN    ODD    SITUAITON 


He's  a  good  boy,  that  David.  He's  a  big 
fellow,  who  could  throw  an  ordinary  man  over  a 
fence,  and  who  could  lick  me  easily  enough,  but 
somehow  he  clings  to  me,  just  as  in  the  old  days 
when  I  used  to  make  hickory  bows  and  arrows 
for  him — the  arrows  were  blunt-headed,  with  a 
shingle-nail  sunk  in  the  point  sometimes,  for  the 
boy  liked  to  know  where  he  hit  when  he  shot  at 
things — and  he   yielded  at  once  to  my  idea: 

"I  want  to  talk  with  Alice,  anyhow,"  said  he. 
This  last  remark  of  his  might  seem  ungracious, 
but  it  wa3  all  right.  I  like  to  know  a  man  who 
talks  with  his  wife  about  things;  for  he  is  generally 
a  good  man,  and,  besides,  David  was  but  lately 
married.  The  idea  of  what  was  to  be  done  came 
from  me,  and  David  knew  that  I  would  at  least 
try  to  think  of  what  was  best  for  him,  and  I  was 
glad  that  he  had  acted 'as  he  did.  And  so  we  went 
up  to  the  gateway  together,  and  he  went  into  the 
house  and  I  went  out  to  the  stac);  to  see  what 
could  be  done. 

To  fix  up  a  half-finished  stack  which  will  stand 
a  possible  rain-storm  is  not  an  easy  task  as  anyone 
who  has  ever  tried  it  will  say.  There  are  the 
courses  and  the  binder  to  them  in  the  center,  all 
lying  there  flat  and  broad  to  the  sky  and  what  may 


1^ 


THEY    DISCUSS    THINGS 


63 


come  from  it,  and  to  turn  that  mass  of  hay  at  its 
top  into  something  sharp-pointed  and  closely  knit 
— something  that  will  shed  rain — is  no  easy  job  for 
the  ordinary  man  who  doesn't  know  things.  I 
climbed  up  a  short  ladder  we  had,  got  on  the  stack 
and  dug  away  at  that  clover.  I  don't  know  just 
how  I  did  it — I  don't  suppose  any  farmer  who  has 
had  to  provide  suddenly  against  a  rain-storm  can 
tell  how  he  planned — but  I  got  that  stack  in  such 
shape  that  it  might  rain  heavily  and  I  would  feel 
safe  about  the  outcome;  and  then,  all  sweating 
and  unkempt,  I  went  to  the  house  and  washed 
myself  from  the  tin-basin  at  the  end  of  the  rain 
trough  -we  had  found  a  button-wood  big  enough 
to  make  a  rain  trough,  which  is  only  a  big  tree 
hollowed  out  to  catch  the  water  from  the  roof — and 
then  went  into  the  house. 

The  family  was  there.  It  was  a  good-looking 
family.  It  was  clear  enough  that  John  Cross  had 
gone  home  without  dropping  in  to  tell  of  the 
trouble.  So  the\  were  all  good-natured.  Alice 
was  looking  at  David,  old  Mackenzie  was  full  of 
old  Scotch  or  Canadian  stories,  though  he  said  he 
didn't  feel  well,  and  David — I  liked  his  courage — 
was  as  jolly  as  if  nothing  had  happened.  It  was 
good  all  round.       I  ate  heartily  with  the  rest,  and 


64 


AN    ODD    SITUATION 


then,  while  the  women  cleared  the  table,  David 
and  old  Mackenzie  and  I  went  out  into  the  sitting- 
room  to  smoke.  We  settled  down  for  a  time  and 
said  nothing.  Then  Mackenzie  began  to  talk  to 
David  about  that  clover  field  and  its  late  crop  in  a 
manner  I  was  glad  of,  because  it  led  directly  to 
what  must  be  the  main   discussion   of  the  evening. 

"It's  a  good  crop,"  said  the  old  man,  "and  I 
didn't  suppose  it  would  do  as  well.  I've  known 
that  field  since  a  time  before  you  were  born,  David. 
I  think  that  top-dressing  you  gave  it  made  it  as 
it  is.  Put  the  crop  in  a  good  stack,  and  there  you 
are  with  so  much  added  for  the  wintering — not 
poor  stuff,  either,  and  the  best  kind  of  feed  or 
whatever  you  may  want  to  turn  the  stack  to.  It 
is  so  much  clear  gain." 

I  laughed  t  •  Tiyself,  despite  all  our  troubles,  to 
think  how  innocent  the  old  man  was  of  what  was 
going  on  and  of  how  he  was  rubbing  it  into  David. 
But  that  young  man  did  not  even  look  at  me  nor 
crack  a  smile.  The  case  was  too  serious  for  him. 
He  looked  at  his  father-in-law  and  said  shortly 
enough: 

"I  don't  think  we'll  finish  that  stack." 

The  old  man  was  astonished:  "Not  finish  the 
stack,  my  boy,"  he  said,  "why  not.-*" 


THEY    DISCUSS   THINGS 


65 


"Because  I  cannot,"  said  David,  "The  govern- 
ment has  announced  through  a  smug-faced  fellow 
that  I  cannot  build  a  stack  of  hay  from  my  own 
farm  and  on  my  own  farm."  And  then  he  told  the 
old  man  all  about  it — how  we  had  the  stick  nearly 
done,  and  of  Vincent's  course,  and  of  the  coming 
of  the  custom-house  man,  and  of  what  happened 
afterward.  Old  Mackenzie,  listened  at  first  with  a 
grin,  but  as  David  went  on  with  his  story  that  died 
away,  and  the  man  listening  became  interested. 

"An'  so  ye  canna'  build  your  stack?"  he  said, 
something  of  the  old  Scotch  way  of  speaking  com- 
ing back  to  him  in  his  earnestness. 

"No,"  said  David. 

The  old  man  had  nothing  to  say  for  a  moment 
or  two.  He  was  thinking  hard.  Then  he  spoke 
deliberately;  he  had  dropped  his  Scotch: 

"Well,  I  suppose  it's  all  for  the  best.  I'm  not 
very  well  acquainted  with  the  laws,  but,  man, 
they're  all  right.      Good  men  did  make  them." 

The  two  had  drawn  up  to  the  table  and  I  had 
followed,  and  was  sitting  at  one  side  and,  in  a  way, 
between  them.     I  could  look  into  both  their  faces. 

David  answered:  "I  don't  know  about  it. 
What  is  the  difference  between  a  man  here  or  a 
thousand  out  from  here.^  Why  should   we  not  be 

5 


66 


AN    ODD    SITUATION 


all  alike?  And  why  should  a  decent  man,  attend- 
ing  to  his  own  affairs  and  paying  his  debts,  be 
hunted  because  he  owns  these  acres  or  those 
acres?     Answer  me  that! 


CHAPTER  VI. 


A  NEW  ELEMENT. 


They  brought  the  babe  before  the  King; 
One  of  them  had  named  it, 
Each  of  them  now  claimed  it. 
Said  the  King,  with  a  laugh: 
"Justice  here  is  more  than  nice; 
Each  of  them  shall  have  a  slice; 
We'll  divide  the  babe  in  half!" 
Waili-.g  then  there  was  from  one: 
Justice  really  was  done, 
While  the  monarch  had  his  fun. 
But,  they  say, 
We  are  not  so  wise  to-day; 
Literally,  now,  we  act; 
We  divide  the  babe  in  fact! 

— Morals  from  Solomon. 

The  old  man  seemed  a  little  puzzled.  It  was 
some  time  before  he  answered,  and  when  he  did  I 
thought  he  weighed  his  words  more  carefully  than 
usual.     He  looked  at  David  sorrowfully: 

"Ye're  in  a  tight  fix,  my  boy;  there's  no  question 

of  that,  but  I  doubt    not    we'll  come  out  all  right, 

somehow.     It's   hard,   but   laws  are   main  good. 

67 


68 


AN    ODD    SITUATION 


We  should  be  little  more  than  the  beasts  which 
perish  without  them.  And  these  laws  which  relate 
to  the  tax  upon  things  carried  over  the  border  must 
surely  be  good  like  the  rest,  for  wise  men  builded 
them,  and  there's  the  Queen's  taxes  to  be  met,  and 
there's  your  own,  and  how  else  would  ye  wisely 
accomplish  it?" 

David  became  excited:  "I  understand  it  all!" 
he  burst  out.  "At  least  I  understand  the  general 
idea  of  it.  But  what  is  gained  by  it.!"  Here  we 
are,  a  lot  of  men  on  the  world.  Other  men 
thought  they  knew  how  big  the  world  was,  but  they 
didn't  know  anything  of  the  sort.  One  of  them 
took  ships  and  found  a  new  continent,  something 
they  had  hardly  dreamed  of,  and  they  straggled 
over  here  from  all  nations  to  populate  it.  They 
had  the  usual  w?.rs.  and  struggles  of  all  sorts,  be- 
cause men  are  fools,  and  the  end  of  it  all  was  that 
one  fighting  race  — the  one  to  which  we  belong — 
got  hold  of  it.  Then  these  people,  the  people  of 
this  fighting  race;,  must  needs  fight  among  them- 
selves, and  the  end  was  that  one  group,  the  home 
stayers,  held  on  to  one  portion  and  the  other  group, 
the  bolters,  held  on  to  the  rest,  and  they  patched 
up  some  sort  of  arrangement  for  so  living;  and 
here   we   are.     But   the   blood   is  the  same,  still. 


A    NEW    ELEMENT 


69 


We  ought  to  be  one  and  not  to  harass  each  other. 
We  have  made  an  imaginary  Hne  between  us,  and 
all  along  it  is  friction  and  hurt,  a  sort  of  inflamma- 
tion started  which  extends  all  over  each  body  and 
makes  it  less  healthy.   What  sense  is  there  in  that?" 

Said  the  old  man:  "They  are  two  different  na- 
tions. It's  like  two  men  trying  to  get  the  best  of 
each  other,  don't  ye  see.-*  In  business  they  are 
figuring  only  on  the  dollars.  Nations  don't  be 
fools,  as  once,  and  fight  over  insults  to  royalty, 
and  all  that.  It's  all  the  dollar,  and  like  the  men 
trading.     Don't  ye  see.^" 

"Oh,  yes,  I  see;  but  we  hold  in  contempt 
brothers  who  try  to  cheat  others  or  take  any  ad- 
vantage in  a  bargain.  And  wouldn't  we  have  a 
double  contempt  for  two  brothers  cast  on  an  island 
alone  who  should  fee)  that  way!  We're  nothing 
but  brothers  on  an  island.  We  speak  English;  we 
are  of  the  sai   e  blood. 

What's  the  difference  between  Canada,  espe- 
cial y  all  Ontario  and  the  North  and  West  and  this 
uppe  part  of  Quebec,  and  some  of  the  Canadian 
Atlantic  coast  people,  and  us  Americans.^  We're 
all  alike.  We  had  the  same  great-great-great- 
grandfathers, and,  with  some  of  us,  the  relation  is 
a  great    deal   nearer.      We    are    on    this  island— 


70 


AN    ODD    SITUATION 


on  this  continent — together,  to  get  along  the  best 
way  we  can.  We  have  the  same  idea  I  know 
of  the  old  home,  the  glorious  island  which  has 
bred  such  a  lot  of  fighters  of  us;  but  why  should 
we  be  separated  over  here?  I  don't  blame  one  lot 
for  having  the  fancy  to  cling  to  the  old  flag  or  the 
old  style  of  government  any  more  than  I  blame  my 
own  people  for  liking  their  own  way  better;  that 
is  a  matter  of  accident  and  sentiment;  but  I  do 
think  there  is  no  necessity  for  extending  the  idea 
into  business  and  crippling  everybody.  I'm  as 
proud  of  old  England  as  you  are,  as  proud  as  any 
rran  in  all  the  Dominion  of  Canada,  and  she  is 
as  much  mine  as  his;  but  I  don't  want  to  be 
wrecked  in  my  own  affairs  by  a  brother  who  is 
here  on  the  big  island  with  me,  and  I  don't  want 
to  wreck  him  either.  I  don't  want  to  let  senti- 
ment, which  may  be  only  a  fancy  and  not  a  real 
manly  sentiment  after  all,  interfere  with  business. 
It  hurts  him  a  great  deal  more  than  it  does  me — I 
know  that — but  it  doesn't  make  any  difference. 
Why  can't  you  Canadians  arrange  it  so  that  you 
can  carry  out  your  own  ideas  as  to  what  flag  you 
should  get  excited  over,  and  at  the  same  time  get 
all  the  advantages  oi  the  position  you  occupy.^ 
Your  young  men  come  over   here — you  are    losing 


A    NEW    ELEMENT 


71 


your  best  English  blood  every  day — because  they 
can  do  better  on  this  side  the  line.  I  know  scores 
of  them,  leading  men  in  the  towns  all  along  the 
lakes,  whom  I  met  or  learned  of  while  on  the  pro- 
pellor,  and  they  are  among  the  very  best.  They 
left  home  because  they  could  not  do  well  under  the 
laws  as  they  are.  Look  at  Chicago !  Throw  away 
the  line  and  what  would  not  Toronto  be — the 
great  city  at  the  other  end  of  the  line  of  great 
lakes!  I  tell  you — though  I  never  thought  of 
how  it  would  hit  us  humble  people  before  we 
joined  these  farms  of  ours — that  I  have  studied 
these  silly  laws  and  read  what  all  the  papers  on 
each  side  have  to  say,  and  it  makes  me  mad!" 

He  paused  for  a  moment  and  then  broke  out 
again:  "It  makes  me  mad,  too,  that  blood  tells 
so  much  less  along  this  American  and  Canadian 
border  than  it  does  anywhere  else.  Do  you  re- 
member how  once  an  American  captain,  regardless 
of  all  law  between  nations,  took  part  in  a  coast  fight 
between  British  and  Chinese,  when  the  British 
were  overmatched,  ready  to  lose  his  commis- 
sion rather  than  see  them  beaten,  and  how 
two  nations  supported  him?  Do  you  remember 
more  lately,  how  the  British  after  bombarding 
Alexandria  cheered  and  forgot  their  military  order 


t#. 


72 


AN    ODD    SITUATION 


when  they  come  upon  the  American  marines  trying 
to  preserve  civilized  ways  'n  the  town  and  as  ready 
to  face  Arabi  Pasha  as  were  the  British  themselves? 
Do  you  not  know  that  anywhere  in  the  world,  ex- 
cept along  this  ridiculous  border  line,  the  brothers 
in  blood  stick  to  each  other  in  great  emergencies! 
Here  alone  they  squabble  and  forget  what  is  for 
the  good  of  all.  It  is  unnatural  and  strange.  It 
is  the  work  of  the  petty,  men,  among  the  two 
countries'   leaders!" 

The  young  fellow  leaned  back  breathless  after 
that  great  political  oration.  Old  man  Mackenzie 
was  rather  dazed.  As  for  me  I  was  astonished; 
I'd  no  idea  that  David  had  ever  given  the  matter 
so  much  thought.  I'd  read  the  papers  for  years 
myself  and  been  always  interested  in  the  debates 
in  congress  and  in  the  Canadian  parliament,  but  I 
didn't  suppose  David  had  paid  any  attention  to  the 
thing.  I  was  rather  proud  of  him.  I  was  glad 
that  he  had  thought  about  the  matter — one  that 
must  soon  be  of  yet  more  importance  than  now — 
even  as  we  were  talking  it  was  important  enough 
to  us,  surely.  But  I  had  nc  suggestion  to  make.  I 
had  thought  about  the  laws,  as  I  have  said,  but  I 
was  thinking  just  now  a  good  deal  more  about  that 
stack  and  that   load   of  hay   and   the   troubles    of 


A   NEW    ELEMENT 


73 


which  I  knew  we  had  now  only  the  beginning. 
Finally  I  ventured  to  speak: 

"It's  this  way,  David,"  I  said.  "Right  or  wrong, 
we've  got  to  obey  the  laws,  or  we  shall  come  to 
grief.  The  men  who  carry  out  the  laws  have  got 
their  eyes  on  us  now,  all  through  old  Vincent,  and 
we  must  get  out  of  the  fix  the  best  way  we  can. 
How  will  this  do.!*  In  the  morning  I'll  go  over  to 
Vincent's  and  ask  this  man  Gaherty  to  come  over 
here.  Then  we'll  all  go  out  to  the  load  together 
and  I  guess  we  can  arrange  it  so  that  he'll  go  away 
satisfied.  And,  after  that,  we'll  get  along  some- 
how." 

Both  David  and  old  Mackenzie  thought  this  a 
reasonable  plan  and  we  decided  to  follow  it.  While 
we  were  talking  John  Cross  had  come  in  and  stood 
there  with  his  sallow  face  showing  oddly  in  the 
lamplight,  listening  to  what  was  said  and  leaning 
forward  eagerly,  toward  the  end  of  the  talk.  "I'll 
be  on  hand,"  he  said,  "and  if  that  hangdog  Vin- 
cent comes  over  I'll  lick  him!     Mark  that!" 

The  dog  barked  and  I  went  outside  and  stood 
in  the  veranda,  looking  down  the  road.  It  was  a 
very  pretty  night.  The  full  moon  was  shining  over 
everything  so  brightly  that  objects  in  its  way  cast 
a  dark  shadow  and  it  was  strange  and  odd  down 


74 


AN    ODD    SITUATION 


.• 


where  the  woods  made  a  part  of  one  field  look  as 
if  painted  with  ink  in  all  sorts  of  queer  figures.  The 
bushes  on  one  side  of  the  road  shaded  it  a  part  of 
the  way  across,  so  that  it  lay  in  two  strips  reaching 
away,  one  black  and  the  other  a  bright  yellow. 
And  down  there,  along  the  yellow  strip,  a  man 
was  coming.  That  was  what  had  made  the  dog 
bark. 

The  man,  who  was  afoot,  came  on  until  he  was 
nearly  opposite  the  house,  then  half  stopped  and 
looked  about  him.  He  saw  me  on  the  stoop  and 
called  out: 

"Hello,  there!" 

"Hello!" 

"Whose  house  is  that.?" 

"David  Long's." 

"Is  he  at  home?" 

"Yes." 

The  man  turned  from  the  road,  opened  the  gate 
and  came  up  toward  the  house.  He  was  a  short, 
thick-set  man,  with  side  whiskers  and  a  ruddy 
face.  He  was  not  a  bad-natured  looking  fellow 
yet  there  was  a  kind  of  business  way  about  him.  I 
knew  him  for  a  Canadian  the  moment  I  looked  at 
him,  not  because  he  came  from  the  Canada  side, 
but  because  of  something  in  his  way.     You  can't 


A   NEW    ELEMENT 


75 


explain  it,  but,  on  tlie  border,  we  always  know  to 
which  side  a  man  belongs  without  asking.  We 
can  tell  even  before  he  speaks.  After  that,  of 
course,  it  is  an  easy  matter  for  anybody. 

As  the  man  reached  the  steps  he  looked  up  good- 
humoredly:  "Fine  night,"  he  said,  and  I  answered 
that  I  agreed  with  him  at  the  same  time  putting  my 
head  in  at  the  door  and  calling  out  to  David  that 
some  one  wanted  to  sec  him.  He  came  out  just  as  the 
man  reached  the  stoop  and,  asked  the  visitor  what 
he  could  do  for  him.  In  a  bustling,  cheerful,  jerky 
way,  the  man  explained: 

"I'm  a  customs'  agent,  you  see — Montreal  dis- 
trict; sent  down  here;  special  letter  from  a  man 
named  Vincent;  said  you  were  bringing  things  over 
the  line;  made  some  inquiries  before  I  got  here; 
not  very  serious  case,  I  hold.  Thought  I'd  come 
right  to  you  and  ask  about  it.    What  ye  got  to  say.^" 

David  drew  a  short  breath — the  thing  was  begin- 
ning to  tell  on  him — but  kept  from  breaking  out 
roughly.  He  couldn't  very  well  be  mad  at  the  man, 
the  fellow  was  so  straightforward  about  it  all. 
He  managed  to  speak  calmly  enough: 

"I  know  all  about  it;  I've  had  a  taste  of  the  same 
thing  already  to-day.  One  of  our  custom-house 
officers  has    been  here.      It's  about  a  load   of-hay, 


76 


AN   ODD    SITUATION 


thoui^^h  I  suppose  there'll  be  other  things."  And 
then  he  went  on  plainly  and  told  the  man  of  the 
trade  with  the  farms,  of  what  had  been  done,  of 
Vincent's  course,  and  of  the  visit  of  Gaherty  ajid 
what  had  happened.  The  Canadian  seemed 
mightily  amused. 

"It's  a  bad  case,  man;  I'll  admit  that,"  he  said, 
"but  we've  got  to  do  our  duty.  The  Dominion  has 
an  interest  in  that  load  of  hay  as  well  as  your 
Uncle  Sam.  We'll  have  to  see  about  it  in  the 
morning.  Can  yo'^  ^ell  me  o^  any  place  near  here 
where  I  can  get  a  bed?" 

David  said  that  the  best  thing  the  stranger  could 
do  would  be  to  walk  right  in  and  sleep  in  the  house 
for  which  he  was,  maybe,  going  to  make  trouble, 
and  he  agreed,  laughing.  He  said  his  name  was 
Jennison  ;  that  he  came  originally  from  St.  Thomas, 
in  Ontario,  though  assigned  to  the  Montreal  district. 
As  we  got  better  acquainteci  with  him  he  seemed 
none  the  worse — just  a  bluff,  hearty,  good-natured 
machine  of  the  tax-collecting  system. 

And  in  the  morning,  as  soon  as  the  early  work 
about  the  place  was  done  and  breakfast  eaten,  I 
went  to  Vincent's  and  asked  Gaherty  to  come  over. 
The  two  men  were  standing  in  the  barnyard  look- 
ing at  one  of  Vincent's    horses  as    I   reached   the 


A    NEW    ELEMENT 


77 


place,  but  I  didn't  speak  to  the  farmer  at  all.  He 
seemed  a  little  too  mean  a  thing,  to  me.  As  for 
Gaherty,  he  climbed  the  fence  and  we  went  at  once 
to  the  load  of  hay.  David  and  Jennison  came  out 
and  John  Cross  came  down  from  the  old  Mackenzie 
house.  We  gathered  about  the  load  and  then 
David  spoke  out: 

"There's  the  load  of  hay,  gentlemen;  what  am  I 
going  to  do  with  it.^"' 

I'd  made  Gaherty  and  Jennison  acquainted  with 
each  other's  names,  and  thought  that,  being  in  the 
same  sort  of  business,  they'd  be  mighty  friendly  at 
once,  but  I  was  mistaken.  They  didn't  seem  to 
take  to  each  other  at  all.  Of  the  two  I  didn't 
much  blame  the  Canadian.  He  was  straightfor- 
ward enough,  at  least,  but  the  other  man  had  shifty 
eyes  and  I  didn't  like  his  smooth,  gaunt,  face,  blue 
where  the  beard  had  been  shaved  away,  and  his 
thin,  hard  lips.  The  Canadian  seemed  only  doing 
his  duty.  The  other  seemed  really  to  like  the 
work.      It  was  he  who  spoke  first : 

"Well,  I  suppose  I  ought  to  seize  the  whole 
thing.  You  were  violating  the  law,  though  I 
didn't  see  you  do  it,  for  there's  the  stack  of  hay 
brought  from  the  side  where  the  hay  didn't  grow, 
and  I'm  told  you've  been   doing   the  same   thing 


78 


AN    ODD   SITUATION 


with  all  about  the  farm.  However,  all  I'll  ask  of 
you  now  is  that  you  pay  duty  on  this  load  you  are 
bringing  over." 

"But  it  isn't  over  yet." 

Now  it  chanced  we  knew  just  where  the  line  ran, 
which  was,  of  course,  not  all  the  time  along  the 
middle  of  the  road.  There  were  little  washouts 
where  the  track  swerved,  and  so  a  wagon  passing 
along  might  be  one  minute  all  in  Canada  and  the 
next  all  in  the  United  States.  Just  here  the  track 
bent  to  the  Canadian  side,  and,  as  I  had  cramped 
the  wagon  to  leave  the  roadway  clear,  I  had  swung 
even  the  fore-wheels  beneath  the  load  nearly  around 
onto  Canadian  soil.  As  it  stood,  there  was  part  of 
one  wheel,  nearly  all  the  wagon  tongue  and  about 
two  feet  of  the  load  of  hay  on  the  American  side. 
John  Cross  hitched  up  to  a  light  wagon  we  had  on 
the  American  side,  and  brought  a  hay-knife  and 
cut  down  squarely  through  the  load  and  carted  off 
the  hay,  to  top  off  the  stack  a  little  more  with. 
Then  we  took  out  the  wagon  tongue  and  took  off 
the  one  wheel — this  Gaherty  made  us  do,  under 
threat  of  seizing  it  all — and  after  that  he,  rather 
sullenly,  consented  to  guess  at  the  weight  of  the 
hay  and  the  value  of  the  wagon  tongue  and  wheel, 
and  David  paid  the  duty,  at   the  rate  of  $4  a  ton 


A    NEW    ELEMENT 


79 


on  the  hay  and  20  per  cent,  ad  valorem  on  the 
wagon.  When  all  was  done  the  thing  looked 
funny.  There  stood  the  sheared-off  load  of  hay, 
standing  up  squarely  against  the  line;  there  was 
the  wagon,  tongueless,  wilh  one  wheel  off  and 
propped  up  by  a  piece  of  rail,  and  there  stood  a 
lot  of  full-grown  men,  supposably  in  their  senses, 
grouped  about  the  spot.  Gaherty  seemed  to  me 
to  be  very  well  satisfied  with  what  he  had  done. 
Jennison  hadn't  anything  to  say,  though  he  had 
called  attention  to  the  fact  when  John  Cross,  who 
had  handled  the  hay-knife,  had  happened  once  or 
twice  to  swing  the  knife  off  a  trifle  into  the  Ameri- 
can side.  He  didn't  think  it  right  to  have  any 
American  hay  exported  into  Canada,  he  said,  with 
a  grin.  Gaherty  didn't  seem  to  appreciate  the  joke. 
But  of  all  the  people  about,  John  Cross  interested 
me  most.  He  was,  ordinarily,  a  fellow  with  a  great 
deal  to  say  of  a  trifling  sort,  yet,  this  morning, 
he  did  not  open  his  lips  unless  compelled.  He  had 
been  more  quiet  than  usual  for  some  weeks — he 
was  troubled  with  dyspepsia  this  summer — but  his 
manner  puzzled  me.  He  appeared  worried  over 
our  troubles  more  than  was  either  David  or  I.  We 
ourselves,  could  not  help  looking  at  each  other  and 
laughing  once  in  awhile,  the  whole  affair   was  so 


m 


8o 


AN   ODD    SITUATION 


absurd,  but  John  Cross  never  smiled.  He  seemed 
brooding  and  malcontent.  As  we  stood  there,  the 
curious  job  ended  at  last,  I  chanced  to  look  up  the 
road  and  saw  a  man  coming. 

"There's  Vincent,"  I  said. 

And  John  Cross  began  to  take  off  his  coat  again. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

AT  TABLE  AND  IN  THE  WOODS. 


The  coon  went  out  one  night; 

Said  he  I  wil'        k  my  love; 
My  soft-furred,  ■'   <;    eyed  love  I'll  seek 
By  the  oozy  bed  ot  tne  winding  creek, 

Where  the  boughs  are  dense  above — 
My  tawny,  timorous  love,  my  bride — 
Together  we'll  creep  by  the  watc-'s  side, 
And,  O,  I  will  serve  her  well! 
I'll  ciush  the  scubbornest  mussel-shell, 

And  a  delicate  oit  she'll  eat; 
And  the  burrowing  crab  and  the  stranded  fish, 
And  the  tender  frog;  each  woodland  dish 

Will  I  lay  at  her  pretty  feet, 
O, soon, 

'Neath  the  light  of  the  autumn  moon, 
While  the  forest  sounds  with  the  mud-hen's  croon 
And  the  quavering  cry  of  the  flying  loon, 

I  will  meet  my  love  said  the  coon. 

— Observations  of  Moreau. 

There  we  stood,  the  group  of  us,  with  our  feel- 
ings and  fancies  as  the  case  might  be,  after  what  had 
happened,  and  there  was  Vincent,  the  cause  of  it 
all,  coming  up  the  road.     I    wanted    to  hurt   the 

fellow,     But  in  a  second  came  a  thought  of  all  the 

81 


82 


AN    ODD    SITUATION 


foolishness  of  it,  I  was  as  cool  as  any  cucumber — I 
don't  know  that  cucumbers  are  cool,  but  that  is 
what  we  say  in  the  country.  Of  course  it  was  all 
unwise.  Of  course  I  ran  up  alongside  of  Cross 
and  swerved  in  ahead  of  him,  and  there  met  Vin- 
cent. There  was  nothing  eise  for  me  to  do. 
"You'd  better  go  back  to  the  house,"  I  said.  "You 
haven'i.  really  any  business  here,  and  John  Cross 
doesn't  like  you  ^aid  is  going  to  lick  you,  if  he  can. 
If  he  can't  I  don't  know  but  I'll  help  him." 

The  man  stopped  and  hesitated;  "I'll  not  go 
back,"  he  said. 

All  this  time  John  Cross  had  stond  moving 
around  restlessly  listening  to  every  word  we  said. 
Suddenly  he  made  a  dash  and  went  by  me  in  a 
second  and  jumped  on  Vincent.  There  was  a 
hit  or  two  and  a  grapple  and  I  ran  in  between 
them,  and  lilted  up,'  and  there  they  were  apart, 
and  I  threatened,  in  the  excitement  of  the  mo- 
ment to  break  the  back  of  either  of  them  who 
dared  to  begin  fighting  again.  I'm  not  a  fighter. 
I'm  afraid  at  all  times,  but  I'm  kind  o'  big  and 
burly  and  it  stood  to  reason  that  I  could   lick    any 

were.      '"' 


such  men  as  they 


They    knew   it   and   that 


was  the  end  of  the  difficulty  for  the  time,  and  Vin- 
cent went  back  to  his  house  and  John  Cross  asked 


AT  TA^LE  AMD  IN  THE  WOODS 


83 


David  what  work  ho  should  do  that  day  and  went 
away  as  well,  and  that  was  ail  there  was  of  the 
fracas.  As  for  the  rest  of  us,  we  stood  and  talked 
about  the  tariff,  and  the  load  of  hay,  and  no  better 
conclusion  was  attained  than  had  been  reached  the 
night  before.  Gaherty  who  =!eemed  to  be  satisfied 
with  what  had  happened  went  back  to  Vincent's 
house,  and  Jennison,  first  trying  to  see  if  he 
could  not  get  a  room  with  David,  went  across  the 
line  and  found  a  home  for  a  time  with  good  Can- 
adian Farmer  Latimer,  who  believed  what  he  read 
and  was  a  conservative  from  away  back.  That 
was  the  end  of  the  business  about  the  load  of  hay. 
What  we  did  with  wliat  was  left  on  the  Canadian 
side,  I  vvill  tell  later.  What  was  done  with  the 
stack  upon  the  American  side,  was  but  what  was 
done  with  any  ordinary  stack  of  hay  anywhere  in 
the  United  States.  It  wns  topped  out  a  little  bet- 
ter and,  later,  fed  to  the  stock.  The  happenings 
of  the  morning  were  naturally  of  interest  to  u^  all 
and  I  was  satisfied  when  I  saw  things  adjusted, 
but,  after  it  was  done,  there  came  upon  me  a 
dfnibtful  mood.  I  was  thinking  all  the  time,  of 
John  Cross.  There  was  something  so  strange  in 
his  way  of  acting,  that  I  wanted  to  know  about  it. 
1  wanted  to  see   what  was  the   matter  with   him 


84 


AN    ODD    SITUAT10I4 


and  at  noon  I  went  up  to  his  house.  I  found  him 
and  his  wife  and  children,  at  dinner,  and  I  may 
say  this  mid-day  dinner  was  a  great  meal  all  along 
the  line.  John  met  me  at  the  door  and  his  wife 
came  a  moment  later  and  then  we  went  in  and  sat 
down  together  and  ate.  What  I  ate  did  not  suit 
me.  It  seemed  to  me  that  then  for  the  first  time 
I  realized  what  it  is  that  may  be  awry  about  the 
farmer,  that  for  the  first  time  I  understood  just 
why  his  stomach  is  so  often  all  wrong  and  why  the 
the  man  who  is  a  man  appears  not  so  to  all  the 
world.  As  we  sat  dovvr  '  .inner,  I  noted  what 
there  was  upon  the  table  and  here  I  must  venture 
foolishly  to  talk  at  large.  I  must  tell  of  what,  it 
seems  to  me,  may  change  in  a  degree,  the  very 
heart  beats  of  a  nation.  And  a  good  deal  of  it  is 
pork.  The  wife  of  John  Cross  was  a  thrifty,  con- 
siderate woman  of  the  ordinary  type.  She  cooked 
what  her  mother  had  cooked  and  thought  no  more 
about  it.  Upon  the  table  were  fried  pork,  bread 
and  boiled  potatoes  and  a  side  dish  or  two,  the  side 
dishes  because  I  was  there — and  nothing  else  to 
speak  of.  There  was  coffee  and  at  the  end  of  the 
meal  we  had  pie.  That  is  the  regular  mid-day 
food  of  some  hundreds  of  thousands,  all  through- 
out the    middle-north,  of  the  great   Anglo-Saxon 


AT  TABLE  AND  IN  THE  WOODS 


85 


population  of  the  continent.  That  is  what  is 
counted  food  good  enough.  Some  grand  bodies 
will  stand  it,  some  others,  and  that  of  John  Cross 
was  one  of  them,  must  fail.  A  failure  means  dys- 
pepsia, morbidness  and   a  change   in   every   way. 

It  means  that  a  man  is  robbed  of  that  which  is 
best  within  him,  that  his  brain  is  warped  by  what 
affects  his  stomach,  that  he  becomes  more  or  less 
a  senseless  clod,  or  something  vicious,  or  some- 
thing insane.  Maybe  I  am  what  they  call  a  crank 
on  this  subject,  but  I  have  thought  upon  it    much. 

The  worst  of  it  is  that  there  is  no  excuse  for  the 
farmer  who  xioes  not  live  as  he  ought.  It  costs 
him  no  more  to  fare  well  and  have  variety,  than  to 
live  in  a  way  that  hurts  him.  There  was  not  much 
difference  in  cost,  but  there  was  little  likeness  be- 
tween the  diriner  on  John  Cross'  table  and  that 
upon  the  table  in  our  ovvn  house  the  same  day. 

I've  heard  that  men  with  plenty  of  food  of  one 
sort  may  yet  die  of  what  they  call  scurvy,  because 
the  system  demands  something  besides  meat  and 
potted  things.  A  good  many  farmers  are  tempting 
scurvy  all  the  time,  when  what  is  good  for  man  is 
at  their  very  doors.  They  may  raise  a  little 
spinach,  or,  when  cowslips  are  plenty  in  the  flats, 
may  pick  a  mess  occasionally,    but  they  do  not   ap- 


86 


AN    ODD    SITUATION 


preciate  how  wholesome  a  dish  of  greens  upon  the 
table  is,  and  born,  as  they  have  been,  in  the  very 
midst  of  growing  things,  it  is  a  fact  that  not  one 
in  ten  knows  how  abundant  good  things  are. 
What  delicious  greens  wild  mustard  makes,  or 
dandelion  tops,  or  turnip  tops,  or  dock  of  one  sort, 
and  then,  it  costs  but  a  little  effort  to  sow  beet 
seed  broadcast  in  any  little  corner  of  a  field,  and 
when  the  young  be^ts  are  an  inch  or  two  in  length 
to  have  soui  -thing  which,  boiled  tops  and  all,  and 
with  good  vinegar,  is  nbout  as  delicious  a  thing 
as  may  go  into  a  man's  mouth.  And  there  is 
many  a  morning  in  early  Fall  when  a  man  can  go 
out  into  the  field  with  a  pail  and  fill  it  with  great 
pink- lined  mushrooms  in  fifteen  minutes  of  time. 
Cooked  with  butter  and  pepper  and  salt,  there  is 
what,  even  to  think  'of,  makes  one's  mouth 
water.  And  then  there  are  the  regular  vegetables 
in  abundance,  and  green  peas,  and  green  corn,  and 
string  beans,  and  things  of  that  sort.  A  few  cresses 
planted  in  the  creek  will  spread  and  yield  forever 
afterward  all  that  can  be  eaten  of  the  crisp,  sharp- 
tasting  stuff,  which  goes  so  well  with  bread  and 
butter.  And  there  are  radishes  and  cucumbers  and 
such  things,  not  old  and  wilted  and  toug^i'  as  they 
get  them  in  town,  but  fresh  from  the  gaidento  th» 


AT  TABLE  AND  IN  THE  WOODS 


87 


table.  As  for  another  thing,  asparagus,  it  is,  I 
understand,  counted  quite  a  delicacy  in  the  city; 
but  in  the  country  the  average  farmer  docs  not 
even  raise  it.  I  remember  that  when  I  was  a  boy 
they  used  to  have  a  bed  of  it  somewhere  about  the 
place — "sparrovvgrass"  they  called  it — and  they 
always  let  it  form  its  green,  feathery  top  and  ripen 
its  red  berries,  and  then  they  would  cut  a  lot  of  it 
for  filling  the  empty  fire-place  in  summer  time.  It 
was  counted  very  pretty  for  such  decoration,  but 
the  young  stalks  were  never  eaten.  That  had  to 
be  learned  from  the  city,  and  it  isn't  very  well 
learned  yet.  As  for  tomatoes,  they  raised  them, 
too,  only  because  they  were  big  and  red  and  pretty, 
but  they  did  not  often  eat  them  when  I  wasyoimg; 
"love  ajvples"  they  called  them. 

Of  fruits  and  berries  there  need  be  no  end,  fresh 
from  tree  or  bu>il  or  plant  in  summer,  and  kept  pre- 
served for  winter.  And  all  these  co^t  nearly  noth- 
ing— on"  ttk  labcu-.  It  is  almost  so  with  the 
meats.  There  is  an  escape  from  the  salt  pork 
where  fcirmers  choose  to  belp  each  other  in  the 
m  A  steer  Willed  in  winter  will  give  three  or 
four  ^milies  who  ^o  into  partnership  fresh  meat, 
and  there  ire  cnlves  that  can  be  divided  in  the 
?pnTa^,  and   in    niU-SJimraier   a   fat    wether   after 


88 


AN   ODD   SITUATION 


shearing  is  little  sacrifice  to  the  flock,  and  makes 
good  mutton.  And  chickens  and  turkeys  and  ducks 
on  a  farm  may  be  said  to  raise  themselves.  There 
are  eggs,  too,  and  between  the  fresh  egg  of  the 
country  and  the  egg  I've  eaten  in  the  towns  there 
isn't  much  comparison.  A  fresh  egg  is  about  the 
most  toothsome  thing  in  all  the  world,  but  I  know 
many  a  farmer  who  keeps  all  his  eggs  to  sell  for 
maybe,  less  than  a  cent  apiece,  while  he  still  eats 
that  salt  pork.      It  is  curious. 

When  it  comes  to  more  fanciful  good  things, 
though — I  mean  the  pies  and  puddings,  and  such 
things  good  housewives  make — why,  with  flour 
and  eggs  and  milk  and  cream  and  butter  in  abund- 
ance, and  little  more  than  sugar  to  get  from  town, 
the  country,  if  there  be  good  sense  and  knowing- 
ness  in  the  kitchen,  is  the  place  to  get  what  is 
really  great. 

As  I  have  already  said,  we  were  most  fortunate, 
Alice  could  cook  all  things  in  English  ways,  and 
Mrs.  Long  was  a  cook  as  deft,  of  Yankee  type. 
Alice,  determmed  to  be  all  a  good  wife  should  be, 
and,  "housc-proud"  as  anyone  I  over  saw,  soon 
learned  all  Mrs.  Long  could  teach  hei,  and  Lucinda 
Bri^s  was  a  great  helper — and  how  wp  fed!  It 
was  worth  while  to  see  Alirr*  nf  her  work,  and  I've 


AT  TABLE  AND  IN  THE  WOODS 


89 


often  looked  in  at  her  through  the  window.  There 
she  would  stand  with  her  sleeves  rolled  up  above 
the  elbows  on  her  round,  white  arms,  and  her 
hands  in  the  dough,  or  whatever  the  mixture  she 
was  preparing  might  chance  to  be,  and  you  could 
see  that  she  was  as  enthusiastic  over  the  duty  and 
the  housewifely  triumph  coming  as  an}  man  in  any 
enterprise  you  could  conceive  of — an  engineer  with 
a  huge  bridge  to  build,  or  a  general  before  a 
battle.  And  Mrs.  Long  and  Lucinda  Briggs  would 
be  hovering  round  assisting  Alice.'*  sometimes, 
especially  when  Yankee  dishes  were  in  hand,  giving 
advice  amid  the  work.  There  was  one  English 
dish  that  caught  us  all.      It  was  cheese-cake. 

Do  you  know  what  a  cheesecake  is.-*  Few 
Americans  know  anything  of  that,  to  me,  the  most 
delicious  of  all  pastry,  yet  it  is  a  simple  dish,  and 
simply  made.  You  but  bogin  as  if  you  were  going  to 
Miiike  chues(5.  The  rich,  fresh  milk  is  put  into 
some  big  vessel,  and  the  rennet  is  put  in,  tiiui  when 
it  all  begins  to  form  a  mass  you  cut  it  criss  cross 
in  little  squares  with  a  long  knife.  That  is  to  let 
out  the  whey,  which  rises  to  the  top.  And,  finally 
you  pour  off  the  whey  and  take  out  the  white  curd 
and  hang  it  up  in  a  bag  of  some  open  stuff  to  let 
the  whoy  remaining  drip  away,  and  at  the  end  you 


90 


AN    ODD    SITUATION 


have  what  is  like  a  cheese  just  started,  and  that  is 
seasoned  with  lemon  and  sugar  and  nutmeg,  and 
is  used  just  as  a  custard  for  little  pies.  There  is 
nothing  else  in  the  world  to  equal  what  you  get 
then  in  the  way  of  pastry. 

And  from  out  the  knowledge  of  Alice  came  En- 
glish pork  pies,  in  their  season,  and  deep  meat  and 
game  pies,  for  there  were  rufYed  grouse  and  quail 
and  squirrels  and  rabbits  about  us  still,  and  plum- 
puddings  in  the  winter,  and  dishes  such  as  those 
sturdy  islanders  across  the  water,  like.  And  from 
the  wisdom  of  Mrs.  Long  came  mince  and  pumpkin 
pies,  and  doughnuts  and  custards,  and  the  half  a 
hundred  other  dainties  which  have  delighted  the 
New  Englanders.  There  was  molasses  from  the 
maples  and  honey  from  the  bees.  We  were  in  hick 
upon  that  homestead. 

But  at  the  table  of  John  Cross,  whe»-e,  hired  man 
though  he  was,  there  was  no  less  abundance  were 
it  taken,  there  were  no  such  meals.  There  was 
the  dyspepsia-breeding  food  of  which  I  have  spoken; 
which  has  done  such  evil  in  the  country.  John 
Cross  showed  what  the  food  could  do. 

He  was  at  this  time  thin  and  gaunt,  and  his 
cheeks  sank  in  below  the  bones  whicli  were  beneath 
his  eyes.      The  Adam's  apple   in  his  throat  stuck 


1:!) 
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AT  TABLE  AND  IN  THE  WOODS 


91 


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out  in  a  sharp  point.  Upon  his  forehead  wjio  tlie 
brown  places  they  call  "moth  spots,"  though  I 
don't  think  most  dyspeptics  show  them.  lie  had 
worked  nard  enough;  he  should  have  tossed  off  the 
effects  of  even  that  unhealthy  diet,  as  sc  many 
thousands  of  firmers  do.  but  he  didn't  happen  to 
be  built  that  way.  He  was  a  man  naturally  buoy- 
ant and  gool-hearted,  but  he  wasn't  strong  enough 
for  the  test.  It  may  be  the  stomach  he  inherited 
was  not  of  the  right  kind.      He  was  giving  way 

I  tried  to  make  it  pleasant  for  Cross,  and  to  talk 
about  the  farm  and  the  Fall  work,  but  I  couldn't 
get  him  interested.  Then  an  ivJea  occurred  to  me 
which  I  made  use  of.  I  knew  that  he  had  always 
liked  to  go  cooning,  and  I  proposed  to  go  later  in 
the  week  and  see  if  we  couldn't  get  one  or  two  of 
the  prowlers  which  were  stripping  of^  the  ears  of 
the  young  corn  in  the  east  field,  close  by  the  \vt)od. 
He  brightened  up  a  little  and  agreed  to  it  before 
I  left,  and  one  night,  later  in  the  week,  we  two 
went  out.  The  old  dog  about  the  place  knew  his 
business  when  there  was  a  coon  to  find,  and  he 
soon  had  one  up  a  beech,  and  we  cut  the  tree  down, 
and  there  was  a  pretty  fight.  But  John  Cross  did 
not  jump  about  and  get  hilarious  and  excited  as  he 
had  done  before.     As  we  walked  home  I  asked  him 


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92 


AN    ODD    SITUATION 


what  was  the   matter.     "Don't   you  feel  well? '  I 

said. 

"Not  very  well,"  he  answered.  "There's  a  sink- 
ing at  my  stomach  most  ol  the  time,  but  that  isn't 
what  bothers  me.  I'm  thinking  about  that  fellow 
Gaherty  and  of  Vincent." 

"What's  the  matter  with  them.?" 

"Oh,  nothing's  ':he  matter  with  them,  except 
that  neither  of  them  have  any  right  to  live.  They 
ain't  fit  for  it;  that's  all." 

I  didn't  know  what  to  say  to  a  man  in  such  a 
mood,  and  so, for  the  time,   the  matter  ended. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 


WHAT  HAPPENED  IN  AUTUMN. 

Hoar  frosts  have  come  again;  the  sun's  rays  smite 
Each  morn,  and  burn  away  a  dust  of  white 
That  lies  on  everything.     The  frost  has  done 
Its  ripening  work:  the  ruffed  grouse  has  began 
To  feed  on  thorn-apples,  the  turkey's  found 
Rich  banquets  undei  beech  leaves  on  the  ground: 
The  husks  of  hickory  nuts  are  opening  wide 
And  nuts  are  fallirg  upon  every  side. 
Perched  in  the  hickory's  top,  and  impudent, 
Is  the  red  squirrel,  restlessly  content, 
And  chirring,  chattering,  leering,  as  his  mood 
May  turn.     The  small  Thersites  of  the  wood 
Finds  with  the  time  for  labor  time  for  play. 
And,  busy  little  braggart,  through  the  day 
Boasts  of  his  hoarding  to  the  loitering  birds, 
Then  toils  a  half  hour  to  make  good  his  words, 
And  rests  again  and  gibbers  'till  he's  reeled 
Off  to  his  taste  some  scandal  of  the  field; 
Tells  how  Miss  Mink  has  lost  her  pretty  tail. 
Through  disregard  for  traps  and  taste  for  quail. 
And  dare  not  meet  young  Martin  her  adored; 
How  Mrs.  Muskrat  quarrels  with  her  lord, 
How  Mrs.  Chipmunk's  buckwheat  cellar's  full, 
And  how  her  sleeping-room  is  lined  with  wool, 

98 


94 


AN    ODD    SITUATION 


Though  Mr.  Chipmunk  died  in  early  sprinij 
And  hard  her  lot  was  thought  to  l)e,  poor  thing; 
"Still,  it  youiii;  I'illy  Gopher  wants  to  call, 
It  is  nobody's  !)usiness  atter  all!" 
Hoar  frosts  have  come  again,  tiie  fro  Us  of  fall. 

The  Pulse  of  Aiiiuinn. 

For  a  day  or  two  nothing  very  serious  happened. 
We  saw  nothing  of  Gaherty  nor  of  Jennison,  though 
we  heard  that  each  was  at  his  boarding  place  and 
making  himself  comfortable.  We  had  a  consulta- 
tion and  it  was  agreed  that,  as  things  were,  it  was 
better  for  us  to  observe  the  customs  laws  carefully 
and  give  neithei  of  the  men  opportunity  or  excuse 
for  interfering  with  us.  We  departed  a  little  from 
the  rule  one  night  when  we  separated  the  horses 
and  cattle  and  harness  and  wagons  and  machinery, 
and  got  on  each  sid^  of  the  line  what  was  most 
likely  to  be  needed  there.  We  did  this  without 
discovery,  though  I  think  Vincent  and  Gaherty 
must  have  guessed  at  it,  for  Gahert}'  came  down 
the  road  next  morning  and  stood  leaning  over  the 
fence  opposite  the  barnyard  at  our  place  and  that 
v/hich  had  been  old  Mackenzie's,  and  seemed  mak- 
ing a  study  of  what  he  saw.  I  think  he  knew  that 
something  had  happened,  but  he  was  not  very 
familiar  yet  with  our  stock  or  implements  and 
could  prove  nothing.      I  saw   him   slouching   back 


WHAT    HAPPENED    IN   AUTUMN 


95 


to  Vincent's  place  again,   looking   sullen    and   dis- 
appointed, but  he   did   not   say   anything    to     me 
though  I  nodded  and  said  "Howdy."     He  was   not 
a  man  who   made   any    point   of  manners.    As  for 
Jennison,  he  didn't   show   himself   at   all    until   he 
came    across  one    afternoon    with    Latimer's    old 
shotgun  over  his  shoulder  and  asked  me  if  I   knew 
in  which  piece  of  woods  there  was  the  best  chance 
for  black  squirrels?     He    was   a   different    sort    of 
man  from  Gaherty.      He  didn't  seem  particularly  to 
like  the  v/ork  he  was  put  to,  though  he  attended  it 
faithfully  enough,  while  Gaherty,    one  could    see, 
delighted  in  all  the  spying  and  seizing  he  might  do 
or  find  a  chance  for.      I  was  ashamed  of   the   con- 
trast between  the  two  men,  it  was  so  much  to  the 
disadvantage  of  the  one   from   the    United   States. 
And  so  it  got  to  be   Fall,  and  the  rrops  were  in, 
and  the  late  plowing  and  general    pottering  about 
the  place,  made  up  all  the   work  left   in   hand.      I 
kept  a  bright  lookout — for  it  had  been  agreed  that 
the  duty  of   keeping   an    eyj   on   the   two    officers 
should  be  left  to  me — and  worked  mostly  near  the 
house.      A  good  many  weeds  had  grown  up  where 
the  garden  had  been,    and    I    went    at    it    mowing 
them  down  so  that  they  wouldn't  go   to    seed   and 
make  things  bad  for  another  year.      There  was  no 


96 


AN    ODD    SITUATION 


getting  the  mowing  machine  into  the  garden 
profitably,  so  I  went  bacl<  to  the  old  way.  You 
might  hear  almost  any  hour  of  daylight  the  sound 
of  my  whetstone  against  the  steel.  It  made  me 
think  of  old  times. 

There  are  three  things  which  to  me,  as  I  dare 
say  they  are  to  many  another  man  of  my  age  who 
has  been  bred  in  the  country,  are  among  the  losses. 
This  is  all  nonsense  I  know,  only  the  silly  fancy 
of  a  man  who  has  passed  his  prime  and  who  loves 
the  memory  of  some  things  he  saw  and  heard,  but 
a  sense  of  these  three  things  missing  comes  to  me 
sometimes  when  I  am  in  the  fields.  One  feels  the 
first  only  in  the  spring,  when  the  snow  has  gone 
and  the  skies  are  blue  and  there  is  a  drift  of  living 
things  from  southern  countries.  It  is  after  the 
blue-birds  and  the  robins  have  come  but  before 
the  leaves  -ire  thick  upon  the  trees.  It  is  what  was 
interesting  once — I  mean  the  flight  of  the  wild 
pigeons.  The  sky  was  dark  with  them  as  they  used 
to  sweep  northward  in  the  spring.  Why,  I've 
seen  them  stretch  out  in  all  directions  in  a  great 
thundering,  flying  army  overhead,  reaching  so  far 
in  every  way  that  you  co  ild  not  see  the  end,  while 
the  ground  in  the  woods  beneath  was  peopled  by 
hosts  of  blue  flocks  of  them  which  had  dropped  to 


WHAT    HAPPENED    IN    AUTUMN 


97 


feed  upon  the  mast  which  had  lain  beneath  the 
beech  and  oak  leaves  throughout  the  winter.  We 
slew  and  fed,  and  became  elated  over  them  and  it 
was  a  wonderful  season  for  all  the  people  living 
in  the  country. 

And  now  there  are  no  pigeons.  It  seems  they 
built  their  nests  in  groups  of  millions  in  some  great 
forest,  all  together.  And  men,  pot  hunters  who  sell 
for  the  market,  found  those  nests  and  slaughtered 
the  birds,  old  and  young  together,  and  stopped  all 
breeding  and  so  the  race  of  the  wonderful  thing  of 
flight  and  of  good  for  man  has  ended.  What 
butchery  there  is  in  a  new  country!  I  have  read 
often  the  story  of  how  the  same  thing  has  happened 
to  the  big  buffalo,  out  west.  That  may  have  been 
a  murder  on  a  grander  scale,  but  to  me  it  is  not 
more  sad.  I  look  up  into  the  blue  sky  in  the 
springtime,  and  there  is  no  swirling  something  to 
make  my  heart  beat  faster,  and  I  hear  no  beating  of 
swift  wings.  I  look  at  the  bare  limbs  of  dead  trees 
near  the  fields  after  the  crops  are  gathered  in 
the  Fall  and  see  them  no  longer  burdened  with  the 
splendid  birds,  stopping  with  us  for  a  week  or  two 
in  their  way  to  the  south  again.  It  is  part  of  the 
old  life  gone. 

And  another  thing  that  is,  maybe,   more  fooli.sh 


98 


AN    ODD    SIT  .  ATION 


still;   hits   me,  though,  perhaps,  not  quite  as  hard. 

It  is  the  loss  of  the  ring  of  the  whetstone  against 
the  scythe  out  in  the  field.  The  mowing  machines 
have  done  away  with  all  that  music.  I  don't  suppose 
it  was  music,  according  to  what  the  teacher  in  the 
singing  school  would  say,  but  it  got  to  be  mighty 
sweet  to  the  e'a.i=>  of  a  man  who  had  grown  up  in  the 
country,  with  a  heart  in  him.  It  was  mixed  up 
somehow,  with  the  smell  of  the  hay,  and  the  June 
skies  and  the  call  of  the  meadow-lark  and  all  that 
was  sweet  and  wholesome  and  growing  and  good 
for  him  and  for  all  the  world.  The  whetstones 
rarely  sing  upon  the  scythes  nowadays.  A  potter- 
ing old  man,  cutting  the  grass  in  the  fence  corners, 
or  about  the  yard  or  in  the  orchard  may  handle 
the  scythe  occasionally  and  sharpen  it  in  the  old 
way,  but  the  music  is  all  gone.  There  is  no  swing 
to  things.  Strong  men  with  brown  arms  are  not 
racing  across  the  field,  laying  their  swaths  together 
nor  using  their  whetstones  as  they  reach  the  bushes 
beside  the  fence  when  the  field  is  crossed.  It  is 
only  a  foolish  old  man's  notion,  but  I  miss  the 
sound  as  I  miss  the  pigeons. 

And  the  third  thing  is  the  thump  of  the  flails 
upon  the  barn  floor.  The  threshing  machine  has 
done  away  with  that.      As  you  pass  along  the  road 


WHAT    HAPPENED    IN    AUTUMN 


99 


in  the  fall  or  winter,  you  do  n-^t  hear  the  steady 
"whack,  whack,"  which  tells  that  the  f^rain  is  being 
pounded  out,  now  sharp  and  clear,  then  duller 
again,  as  the  flail  comes  down  toward  the  head  of 
the  grain  and  close  to  the  floor  or  nearer  the  hody 
of  the  sheaf.  There  was  music  in  that  old  banging 
of  the  flails,  and  now  you  never  hear  it,  unless,  it 
may  be  where  someone  is  threshing  out  a  little 
buckwheat,  a  sort  of  crop  the  straw  of  which  the 
machinery  does  not  t<u.ke  to  kindly,  and  which  is 
not  good  for  fodder. 

And  these  are  among  the  chief  things  I  miss. 
Their  absence  makes  the  old  man  in  the  country 
lonesome,  but  we  can't  expect  things  to  remain  the 
same  in  a  new  country,  and  this  appears  to  be  a 
time  when  everything  is  changing,  anyhow.  I 
suppose  the  very  fact  that  this  is  a  new  country 
has  had  much  to  do  with  what  is  like  a  revolution 
in  the  way  of  doing  farm  work.  Men  thrown  upon 
themselves  without  the  means  they  had  become 
accustomed  to  in  the  old  world  must  invent,  per- 
force, and  so  the  habit  was  bred  in  the  new  race  we 
call  Americans.  They  say  it  is  much  the  same 
way  with  that  other  new  race  of  English  blood 
who  have  made  Australia  a  great  country.  And 
man  must  not  complain.   Some  old  fellow   in  Aus- 


lOO 


AN    ODD    SITUATION 


tralia  is  grumbling,  I  dare  say,  to-day  because  the 
kangaroos  are  not  as  thick  as  they  used  to  be,  or 
that  there  are  no  more  of  those  curious  duck-billed 
creatures,  half  bird,  half  beast,  they  used  to  find 
along  the  streams.  But  Australia  is  not  America, 
and  our  ways  have  changed  more  directly  from 
those  they  had  been  in  the  wheat  and  grass  fields 
of  England  from  a  time  long  before  this  country 
was  discovered. 

I  have  got  away  from  my  story,  I  know.  A  man 
past  middle  age  is  apt  to  ramble.  Well,  we  did 
well  enough  for  a  time,  and  one  day  Jennison 
came  over  and  found  David  and  me  in  the  barn, 
where  we  were  in  the  horse  stable  knocking  down 
a  partition  and  making  a  double  stall  for  a  Morgan 
colt,  of  which  David  was  very  fond,  and  to  which 
he  wanted  to  give  special  attention  the  coming 
winter.  Jennison  came  strolling  in  and  spoke 
pleasantly,  and   finally  said   he  was  going  away. 

"I  didn't  like  the  job,  anyhow,"  said  he,  "but 
the  office  got  so  many  messages  about  you  that  it 
was  finally  concluded  you  must  be  doing  something 
serious,  and  so  I  was  sent  on.  I  shall  report  the 
thing  as  it  is.  But,  mind  you,  I  may  be  sent  back 
again,  in  time.  The  condition  of  things  is  an  odd 
one,  and  somebody  is  at  work  to  make  it   uncom- 


WHAT    HAPPENED    IN    AUTUMN 


lOI 


fortable  for  you.      If  I  come,  of  course,  I  must    do 
my  duty." 

"It's  all  Vincent,"  said  I. 

"I  don't  know  anything  about  that.  It's  none 
of  my  business.   I  tell  you  only  what  seems  proper." 

David  thanked  him  and  said  he  believed  he 
understood  things  as  they  were,  and  Jennison  went 
away.  I  tried  to  learn  what  Gaherty  was  about 
then,  but  I  didn't  succeed  very  well.  I  knew  he 
was  at  Vincent's  still,  fori  could  see  him  occasion- 
ally on  the  front  stoop  or  riding  with  Vincent  into 
Magone  and  back  again,  but  further  than  that  he 
was  watching  us,  I  could  learn  nothing.  It  was 
Lucinda  Briggs  who  made  the  first  discovery  of  his 
ways. 

Lucinda  Briggs  could  never  quite  understand 
the  tariff,  much  as  we  tried  to  make  it  clear  to  her. 
"Isn't  this  our  farm.?"  she  would  say,  "and  isn't 
all  that  is  upon  it  ours,  and  can't  we  move  things 
about  on  our  own  ground  as  much  as  we  want  to.? 
Sakes  alive!  I  ain't  going  to  let  either  of  them 
two  fellows  stop  me  in  my  movings  about  or  take 
away  anything  I  carry.     I  won't  stand  it!" 

Lucinda  did,  of  course,  whatever  Alice  told  her 
but  she  did  something  Alice  did  not  tell  her  to  do, 
and,  I  may  be  wrong,  but  I  imagine   that    blessed 


I02 


AN    ODD    SITUATION 


Canadian  did  not  make  any  special  effort  to  note 
all  Lucinda's  goings  and  comings.  There  was  an 
asparagus  bed  on  the  Mackenzie  place  and  none 
on  ours,  yet  we'd  often  had  asparagus  in  summer 
after  the  load  of  hay  was  seized  and  we  had  been 
given  warning,  though,  I  never  saw  anybody  bring- 
ing over  the  plants.  And,  after  the  farms  were 
joined,  the  chickens,  which  were  something  of  a 
;uiisance  about  our  barn,  had  been  all  taken  over 
to  the  other  place.  When  we  settled  down  to  observe 
the  law  after  the  officers  came,  part  of  the  c'lickens 
were  brought  back,  for  we  were  great  egg-eaters, 
but  the  fowls  didn't  stay  with  us  a  day.  For  some 
reason  they  liked  the  Mackenzie  place  better  and 
the  entire  flock  stayed  and  the  hens  had  their  nests 
there.  Yet  there  were  plenty  of  eggs  on  our  table. 
Lucinda  Briggs  had  done  the  egg-gathering  in  the 
past  and  no  one  asked  her  any  questions  now. 

One  night,  about  9  o'clock,  David  and  I  were 
in  the  sitting-room  just  thinking  of  going  to  bed, 
when  we  were  almost  lifted  from  our  chairs  by  a 
woman's  scream  which  could  have  been  heard  a 
mile.  It  was  the  healthiest  scream  I  ever  listened 
to.  There  was  not  so  much  of  terror  in  it  as  there 
was  of  dreadful  earnestness.  It  seemed  to  come 
from  right  across  the  road.      David  jumped  for  the 


v.; 

t't 


WHAT    HAPPENED    IN    AUTUMN 


103 


door  and  ran  out  and  I  followed  him  in  a  moment 
with  the  lantern.  The  screams  kept  up  as  I  ran 
across,  and,  mingled  with  them,  was  a  rough  man's 
voice  swearing  a  blue  streak.  As  I  came  up,  I  saw 
David  dodging  about  a  black  heap  which  was 
tumbling  about  on  the  ground  and  I  threw  the 
light  of  the  lantern  on  it.  Then  I  sat  down  on 
the  grass  und  roared,  and  David  did  the  same  thing. 
We  couldn't  help  it.  There,  struggling  together, 
were  Lucinda  Briggs  and  Gaherty,  and  such  a  sight 
I  never  saw  before!  They  were  smeared  with  the 
yolk  and  whites  of  dozens  of  eggs,  from  head  to 
feet,  and,  as  they  rolled  about,  the  mess  got  worse. 
They  were  a  couple  of  the  mo'^t  allocking  Lud  rid- 
iculous objects,  I  ever  saw. 

But  Gaherty  had  a  tight  grip  on  Lucinda  and 
she  was  trying  to  get  away  and  we  laughed  but  for 
a  moment.  David  sprang  at  them  and  wrenched 
Gaherty  away  and  stood  the  fellow  on  his  feet. 
Lucinda  getting  up  at  the  same  time,  and  there  we 
all  were,  looking  at  each  other  by  the  light  of  the 
lantern. 

"Where  is  the  line.^"  David  asked  me. 

I  locked  and  told  him  we  were  about  six  feet  on 
the    Canadian    side.     David   turned  to   Gaherty: 

"Look  here,"  he  said,  "I'm  on  my  own  farm,  in 


I04 


AN    ODD   SITUATION 


Canada.  You  are  a  trespasser.  If  you  don't  get 
out  of  this  in  one  minute,  I'll  give  you  such  a 
thrashing  that  you  won't  sneak  around  any  man's 
place  again  in  six  months!" 

The  man  said,  sullenly,  that  he  thought  he  was 
on  the  American  side  and  went  slowly  a  few  feet 
to  the  south.  Then  we  turned  our  attention  to 
Lucinda  Briggs. 


CHAPTER  IX. 


INTO  SPRING  AND  BEYOND. 


"Splash!" 
The  setting  sun  throws  violet-colored  darts 
Through  the  leafless  branches  where  the  forest  parts, 
Shafts  which  fall  richly  through  it  and  beyond 
Upon  the  darkening  surface  of  the  pond. 
See  how  the  vioiet  mingles  with  the  black, 
As  sudden  rinnles  make  a  cobweb  track; 
How  opals  ^..p  in  thousands  to  the  shore, 
To  touch  its  margin  and  appear  no  more; 
How  from  one  spot  eccentric  circles  glide. 
Each  with  its  gem-load  to  the  water's  side! 

"Splash!" 
Almost  there  is  an  echo  from  the  hill, 
But  the  soft  sc.und  falls  short.      Now  all  is  still* 
A  pickerel  rose  just  then! 

—   /«  M'^alion's  Trail, 

Lucinda  was  very  red  in  the  face— red,  at  least, 
where  she  wasn't  yellow.  The  inside  of  the  eggs 
had  net  only  spread  itself  over  her  dress,  but  it  was 
in  her  ha^.r  and  eyes  and  ears.  She  didn't  say  much 
as  we  started  to  lead  her  up  to  the  house.  As  we 
crossed  the  road  we  were  stopped    for  a    moment 

105 


io6 


AN    ODD    SITUATION 


by  Gaherty.  who  called  out  to  us  from  only  a  few 
feet  away: 

"I  made  a  mistake,  but  that  is  nothing,  you'll 
learn  yet!  Ill  get  even  with  you!  Don't  forget 
that!" 

We  made  no  answer,  but  hurried  Lucinda  away 
toward  the  house  and  tooii  her  into  the  kitchen, 
and  Alice  and  Mrs.  Long  came  in  and  washed  her 
face  and  ears  and  neck.  And  then,  before  any- 
thing more  was  done,  we  asked  Lucinda  to  tell  her 
story.      It  did  us  good. 

"I  may  as  well  own  up  the  whole  thing,"  blub- 
bered out  the  girl,  half  laughing  and  half  crying; 
"I've  been  getting  the  eggs  all  along — of  course 
you  have  known  that,  all  of  you — you  don't  'spose 
I  was  going  to  let  them  fellows  stop  it.^  An'  the 
way  I  done  it  was  to  wait  a  day  or  two,  until  I  got 
a  batch  of  three  or  four  dozen,  an'  go  over  'bout 
this  time  o'  night  an'  bring  'em.  I  knew  where 
the  nests  was,  an'  it  was  only  feeling  round  to  get 
the  eggs.  Wa'al,  to-night  I  got  a  big  lot;  there 
was  near  four  dozen,  an'  I  lifted  up  the  ends  of  my 
apron  an'  tied  'em  round  back  of  my  neck,  an' 
that  made  a  big  bag,  an'  I  put  'em  all  in  there  an' 
started  down  her  ,  walking  very  steady,  coz  I  WdS 
afraid  the  eggs  >    )uld  spill.      An'  jest  as   I   got    to 


INTO    SPRING    AND    BEYOND 


107 


the  ditch,  before  you  cross  the  road,  somebody 
grabbed  me.  1  was  scared  an'  I  hollered,  but  I  fit. 
An'  we  rastled  an'  we  both  went  down  in  a  heap, 
an'  he  was  on  top  an'  he  busted  all  the  eggs 
an'  they  run  over  me,  an'  then  I  squirmed 
and  heaved  'im  an'  got  on  top  my  self,  and 
the  eggs  run  over  him,  too;  an'  I  really  believe 
I'd  licked  'im  in  the  end.  An'  then  you  come. 
An'  it  was  that  man  Gaherty,  an'  I'd  like   to    kill 


im 


I" 


We  laughed  until  we  were  tired.  To  see  Lu- 
cinda,  excited  as  she  was,  and  smeared  all  over 
with  egg,  standing  and  waving  her  arms  and  telling 
of  her  "rastle"  with  Gaherty,  was  the  funniest 
thing  in  the  world.      She  was  mad,  clear  through. 

We  expected  that  something  would  happen  in 
the  morning;  that  Lucinda  Briggs  would  be 
arrested,  or  something  of  that  sort,  but  nothing 
took  place  out  of  the  common.  It  was  plain  that 
Gaherty  felt  he  had,  in  his  eagerness,  seized  upon 
Lucinda  a  trifle  too  soon,  and  that  he  had  no  case 
against  her.  And  a  day  or  so  later  we  heard  that 
he  had  left.  I  learned  in  Magone  that  this  was 
really  the  case,  and  we  all  breathed  a  little  more 
easily.  The  man  had  been  a  sort  of  nightmare  to 
us,  though  we  had  tried  to  observe  the    laws   most 


io8 


AN    ODD    SITUATION 


carefully — barring  Lucinda  Briggs.  But  about  her 
we  men  hadn't  known;  we'd  only  guessed. 

And  nothing  more  was  heard,  for  the  time,  of 
either  Gaherty  or  Jennison,  though  I,  myself,  never 
felt  quite  at  ease.  I  had  a  kind  of  feeling  that,  at 
some  time,  Gaherty  would  come  back,  and  come  in 
earnest.  I  could  not  forget  the  vicious  look  on  his 
face  as  T  last  saw  him  standing  there,  all  egg-be- 
smeared, in  the  light  of  the  lantern.  Such  a  man 
as  he  wouldn't  wear  for  a  moment  such  a  look  as 
that  and  nothing  ever  come  of  it;  of  this  I  felt  cer- 
tain. But  1  said  nothing  about  it  to  David  or  the 
rest  of  the  family.  What  was  the  use  pf  giving  to 
them  my  gloomy  fancies.!*  And  after  a  while  I 
almost  forgot  them  myself. 

So.  we  drifted  along  toward  spring.  It  was  not 
a  bad  winter  tor  us.  .  The  crops  had  been  good, 
though  we  lost  something  through  not  being  able 
to  bring  to  our  own  market  those  raised  on  the 
Canadian  side.  We  had  sold  early,  else  the  case 
might  have  been  a  little  different.  I'm  afraid  some 
of  the  crops  might  have  gone  the  other  way  if  the 
officers  had  left  sooner.  We  had  no  idea  of  doing 
any  smuggling,  but  it  did  seem  a  little  hard  that 
we  could  not  drive  as  we  wished,  or  move  the  stock 
or  tools  about  on  our  own  place  and,  after  awhile. 


INTO  SPRING  AND  BEYOND 


109 


we  got  a  little  careless.  And  March  came  at  last, 
and  the  snow  began  to  melt  away  and  it  was  almost 
spring.  Then  something  happened  which  set  me 
thinking  about  John  Cross  again. 

The  snow  had  all  gone  and  the  ground  was  bare 
and  black,  and  one  afternoon,  came  a  steady, 
drizzling  rain,  which  lasted  far  into  the  night. 
Then,  suddenly,  it  turned  cold  and  in  the  house  we 
lay  snug  under  the  quilts  and  coverlets.  The  morn- 
ing broke  clear  as  could  be  and  the  sun  came  out 
on  one  of  those  scenes  you  look  upon  only  once  in 
every  four  or  five  years.  The  rain  had  frozen  as 
it  fell  on  everything  and  every  tree,  every  branch 
and  every  twig  was  a  glittering  thing  in  silver, 
hanging  down  with  the  weight  of  it.  The  orchard 
was  one  great  blaze  of  glory  but  all  looked  strange 
and  unnatural.  The  world  of  the  day  before  was 
gone  and  a  new  one  had  come  in  its  stead.  The 
branches  all  hung  so  near  the  ground  that  the 
features  of  the  place  were  changed  and  everything 
seemed  in  a  way  unreal.  It  was  like  what  I  had 
read  of  in  some  fairy  story,  with  all  the  barbaric 
lightness  and  grace  and  splendor  of  the  thing.  I 
went  out  through  the  orchard  for  a  short  cut  to  the 
road  over  a  place  where  the  fence  was  down,  and, 
half  way  through,  I  met  John  Cross  on  his  way  to 


1  lO 


AN    ODD    SITUATION 


our  house  on  some  errand.  I  started  as  I  saw  him, 
for  I  hadn't  noticed  how  changed  he  was,  even 
from  the  man  I  have  described  already.  He  looked 
bad  enough,  certainly,  at  the  time  when  I  took 
dinner  with  him,  but  now  he  looked  far  worse.  It 
may  have  been  the  brightness  of  everything  around 
that  brought  out  the  manner  of  his  face  more 
clearly,  for  we  stood  beneath  an  archway  blazing 
with  white  light,  but,  whatever  the  reason,  his 
looks  brought  me  to  a  standstill  in  a  moment. 
"What's  the  matter  with  you,  John.?"  I  asked  him. 

"Nothing  in  particular,  only  I've  got  that  flatiron 
in  here  all  the  time,"  he  said,  pressing  his  hand 
against  his  stomach  as  he  spoke. 

"Dyspepsia  as  bad  as  ever.?" 

"About  the  same.    There's  a  weight  in  here." 

"What  are  you  doing  for  it.?" 

"Oh,  the  old  woman  has  got  some  wild  cherry 
bark  and  whiskey  and  I  take  that.  Guess  I'll  be 
all  right  by  and  by.  But  this  flatiron  makes  me 
miserable.     I  have  odd  fancies  sometimes." 

I  laughed,  thinking  to  improve  his  spirits.  "You'll 
be  all  right  if  you  eat  less  fried  pork  and  a  greater 
variety  of  things  and  breathe  in  all  you  can  of  pure 
air.  You  must  brace  up,  you  know;  maybe  you'll 
have  to  lick  Gaherty  sometime.  I  feel  confident 
the  fellow  is  coming  back  again." 


INTO    STRING    AND   BEYOND 


I  I  I 


Then,  in  a  moment,  I  wished  I  hadn't  spoken 
of  Gaherty,  for  when  I  mentioned  his  name  John 
Cross  started  as  if  it  were  summer  and  a  massasauga 
had  rattled  in  the  grass,  and  there  came  into  his 
eyes  a  gleam  I  didn't  like.  "What's  that  you  say  ?'' 
he  almost  screamed  out. 

"Nothing,  John,"  I  answered,  "nothing  at  all.  I 
only  said  I  thought  Ganerty  would  be  back  by  and 
by  and  that  we  might  have  trouble  with  him." 

The  man  leaped  up  and  down  without  any  rea- 
son. "Let  him  come!"  he  shouted.  "Let  him 
come!  I'll  attend  to  him!  Don't  you  forget  that, 
Jason.  He's  been  the  ruin  of  us  or,  if  he  hasn't, 
he's  goin'  to  be.  He's  got  a  bad  eye.  I  saw  it 
when  he  first  came  here.  But  I'll  attend  to  him! 
Don't  you  forget  that!" 

I  said  that  maybe  I  was  mistaken  and  that, 
considering  all  things,  it  was  likely  we  should  never 
see  the  man  again,  out  John  Cross  was  not  satis- 
fied. I  talked  about  other  things  and  tried  to  get 
his  mind  away  from  Gaherty  but  I  wasn't  over 
successful.  John  would  stick  to  that  subject,  and 
I  wondered  as  I  looked  at  him  and  heard  his  ram- 
bling talk.  He  had  grown  much  thinner  and  more 
gaunt  than  he  had  been  the  summer  before  and 
his  face  had  become  so  yellow   all  over  that   the 


112 


AN    ODD    SITUATION 


brown  moth  spots  on  his  forehead  could  hardly  be 
distinguished.  He  glanced  sideways  out  of  his 
eyes  and  would  start  at  any  unexpected  sound. 
He  was  not  a  pleasant  thing  to  look  at.  We  did 
not  talk  of  Gaherty  again  for  many  a  day. 

The  spring  was  good,  a  season  I  shall  not  forget, 
with  all  its  pleasantness,  this  year  of  which  I  am 
telling.  There  was  not  a  little  rain  and  the  creek 
was  full  and  overflowed  the  flats  and  the  pickerel 
came  up  and  the  splash  of  their  rising  could  be 
seen  at  sunset  all  over  what  looked  almost  like  a 
lake.  We  speared  a  number  of  them,  and  very 
g  od  eating  they  made.  And  the  drying  off  was 
rapid  and  there  was  no  trouble  about  getting  in 
the  early  crops. 

Spring  drifted  along  into  summer  and  new  plans 
were  made  and  the  ctops  put  in  were  growing  well 
and  it  was  a  comfortable  household  of  which  David 
was  the  head.  There  was  but  one  thing  out  of  the 
regular  order.  Our  Alice  did  not  attend  to  her 
usual  household  duties  now  and  was  rarely  with  us 
at  meal  times  and  there  came  an  air  of  anxiety  to 
David.  When  there  was  anything  to  be  got  at 
Magone  he  no  longer  made  the  trip,  but  sent  me 
instead  and  he  was  never  far  from  the  house  at  any 
time.     And,  finally,  one  day  he  drove  across  the 


INTO   SPRING    AND    BEVOND 


113 


country  to  bring  old  Mrs.  Shannon  to  our  place. 
The  substance  of  it  all  was  that  what  husbands  and 
wives  who  love  each  other  wish  was  about  to  come 
to  David  and  Alice  and  due  preparation  had  to  be 
made  for  the  great  event.  In  the  country,  a  doctor 
is  rarely  brought  from  town  at  such  times  as  this, 
but  there  is  always  some  old  lady,  of  the  neighbor- 
hood, some  self-contained  and  motherly  old  creat- 
ure, who  is  relied  upon  and  whose  services  are 
always  freely  given.  In  our  immediate  region  Mrs. 
Shannon  was  the  pillar  of  strength.  She  came  to 
the  house  and  was  looked  upon,  for  the  time  being, 
as  one  of  the  family.  And  then  happened  some- 
thing odd. 

Old  man  Mackenzie,  who  was  in  particularly 
good  shape  this  summer,  v/as,  of  course,  all  in- 
terest, and  one  day  he  proposed  to  David  that  Alice 
should,  for  a  few  weeks,  take  up  her  abode  in  a 
wing  of  the  old  homestead,  a  part  which  the  Cross 
family  rarely  used,  and  which  could  be  easily 
furnished  up  for  her.  "It's  the  room  in  which  she 
was  born,"  said  the  old  man,  "and  I've  an  idea 
she'd  like  it." 

The  proposition  was  so  queer  that  David  was 
startled  at  first,  and  then  he  burst  out  laughing: 
"I  see  what  you're    at,"  he  shouted.      "Oh,    but 

8 


114 


AN    ODD    SITUATION 


you're  crafty!  You  want  a  little  Canadian." 
Old  men  are  ♦lot  supposed  to  blush,  I  believe, 
but  old  man  Mackenzie  came  as  near  to  it  as  he 
could  just  then.  He  said  nothing  at  first,  but  in 
a  moment  or  two  hobbled  off,  grumbling  out  that 
anyhow  it  wouldn't  be  a  bad  thing  for  the  child. 
Mackenzie  was  nothing  if  he  wasn't  patriotic.  And 
David,  as  a  second  thought  came  to  him,  ran  after 
the  old  man  and  told  him  that,  whichever  side  of 
the  line  the  child  was  born,  it  would  have  a  good 
grandfather,  anyhow.  This  was  good,  as  far  as  it 
went,  and  mollified  the  old  man  somewhat,  but  I 
could  see  that  he  wasn't  quite  satisfied.  He'd  have 
given  a  good  deal  to  have  had  us  living  in  ^he 
other  house.  But  that  was  out  of  the  question, 
and  he  made  the  best  of  it.  There  was  a  good 
deal  of  philosophy  in  old  man  Mackenzie. 


CHAPTER  X. 


GEMINI. 


The  sunbeams  flit  o'er  floor  and  wall 

And  caper  on  the  ceiling, 
And  sober  sunbeams  are  tliey  all, 

Not  one  of  ihem  is  reeling. 

They're  skirmishing  a  cradle  'round, 

Al)out  and  in  and  under, 
And  something  very  fair  they've  found — 

But  they  are  lost  in  wonder. 

They  swirl  about  and  in  and  out 

And  each  is  full  of  trouble; 
There  all  amazed  and  all  in  doubt, 

For  all  of  them  see  double! 

— Lyrics  of  the  Zodiac. 

It  was  full  mid-summer  now  and  the   elderberry 

blossoms  no  longer  hung  in  snowy  slabs  along    the 

fences.     The  flowers  had  loosened  and  fallen  from 

the  blackberry  bushes  and  made   a  sweet-smelling 

carpet  for   the  chipmunks     down    below.     There 

was  just  the  slightest  touch  of  brown  to  the  pink- 

ness  of  the  clover  heads,  and    the   bobolinks   were 

getting  sober.     They  no  longer  pitched,   quiveiing 

115 


116 


AN    ODD    SITUATION 


ill  their  odd  way  with  song,  from  shrub  to  fence, 
and  from  fence  to  the  grassy  furrows,  but  were  be- 
coming more  sedate.  The  yellow-white  upon  their 
necks  was  changing  to  a  brown  and  only  an  occas- 
ional bird  of  them  was  foolish.  Here  and  there 
such  a  hardened  one  would  forget  his  growing  family 
and  business  and  sing  boisterously.  He  didn't 
seem  to  know  that  very  soon  he  would  be  a  portly 
little  reed  bird,  to  be  slain  by  a  pot-hunter  some 
fine  morning  when  gorging  himself  along  the 
marshes  which  lie  just  east  of  the  Long  Bridge 
over  which  came  the  hurrying  thousands  after  the 
first  battle  of  Bull  Run.  He  didn't  seem  to  quite 
grasp  the  fact  that  he  would  be  eaten  then  at  a 
restaurant  in  Washington,  and  paid  for  by  some 
foolish  congressman,  looking  into  the  eyes  of  an 
adventuress  across  the  table.  This,  I  judge  from 
what  I've  read  in  the  newspapers,  is  what  often 
happens  to  a  bobolink.  The  red-winged  blackbirds 
were  in  their  glory  now  along  the  creek  and  held 
town  meetings.  The  wild  flag  was  turning  out  its 
three-cornered  pod.  The  pond  lilies  were  wide 
open  and  their  broad  leaves  over-lapped  each 
other  so  stiffly  that  the  frogs  sat  on  them.  7t  was 
a  shrewd  mink  wandering  along  the  bank  that 
could  get  a  frog  loafing  out  there  on  the  lily  pads. 


GEMINI 


ny 


The  mink  couldn't  steal  upon  him  quietly  enough 
through  such  surroundings  and  the  frog  had  time 
abundant  for  a  header.  A  devil's  darning-needle 
perched  on  every  bullrush  and  there  were  big  black 
butterHies,  wonderfully  marked  with  scarlet  and 
gold,  fluttering  about  among  the  late  flowers,  a  sort 
of  butterfly  one  does  not  see  much  of  earlier  in  the 
season.  It  was  the  half-lazy  few  days  which  come 
just  after  the  toil  of  the  haying  season  is  over  and 
before  harvesting  begins.  There  is  hardly  time 
enough  to  draw  a  long  breath  as  they  say,  but  in 
the  country  we  make  the  most  of  it. 

And  one  afternoon  of  just  such  a  day  as  I  have 
tried  to  give  an  idea  of,  I  was  down  in  what  we 
called  the  east  field,  looking  to  see  if  there  was 
water  enough  in  a  little  pool  we  had  dug  by  a 
spring  there  for  three  or  four  calves  we  were  keep- 
ing on  that  part  of  the  place.  I'd  not  been  there 
long  and  was  trying  with  a  hoe  to  improve  some- 
what the  little  channel  from  the  spring  to  the  pool 
when  I  heard  David  calling.  I  went  back  to  the 
house  and  he  met  me  at  the  gateway: 

"You  must  look  after  everything  outside,  this 
afternoon,  Jason,"  he  said.  "I  don't  want  to  leave 
Alice,"  and  he  strode  up  the  path  and  went  into 
that  part  of  the  house  which  he  and  Alice  had  taken 
for  their  own. 


ii8 


AN    ODD   SITUATION 


It  was  a  "wing"  room  and,  like  so  many  such 
rooms  in  the  country,  was  originally  a  house  by  it- 
self, the  small  frame  structure  put  up  in  the  days 
when  the  pioneer  had  little  rnoney  to  build  with. 
It  was  in  it  that  David  was  born.  Later,  when 
the  big  house  had  been  built,  the  partitions  had 
Deen  tc.ken  out  of  the  old  one  and  it  had  been 
turned  around  and  attached  to  the  new  structure 
as  a  wing,  making  a  big,  comfortable  room  open 
to  the  country  on  three  sides.  There  were  rose- 
bushes about  it,  and  a  little  piazza  on  one  side  and 
vines  ran  all  over  it.  It  was  a  pleasant  place  but 
it  was  not  as  new  and  strong  as  the  main  part  of 
the  house,  and  David  had  been  talking  with  me 
about  putting  on  a  new  roof.  It  was  rain-proof 
yet,  but  the  old  moss-covered  shingles  were  so 
brittle  one  could  almost  crumble  them  with  the 
g'-asp  of  his  fingers. 

There  was  an  anxious  look  on  David's  face  when 
he  left  me,  for  which  I  didn't  blame  him,  and  I 
resolved  that  he  should  have  nothing  to  worry  him 
about  the  farm  until  there  was  nothing  on  his  mind. 
I  started  toward  the  barn,  and  on  the  way  there  it 
struck  me,  somehow,  that  everything  was  stiller 
than  usual.  There  had  been  that  feeling  in  the 
air  which  tells  of  coming  rain,  and  there  had  been 


GEMINI 


119 


all  the  other  usual  signs.  The  bluejays  had  been 
calling  querulously,  and  the  tree-toads,  in  a  beech 
which  had  been  left  standing  near  the  house,  were 
making  a  good  deal  of  noise.  Now  the  tree-toads 
and  jays  were  still,  and  I  could  see  a  crow  or  two 
flying  over  the  field  toward  the  wood,  but  making 
never  a  sound.  It  struck  me  oddly,  and  I  turned 
and  went  back  to  the  house,  where  an  open  space 
in  the  yard  behind  gave  me  a  clear  view  in  all  di- 
rections. 

There  was  not  breeze  enough  now  to  lift  the 
leaves  upon  the  apple  trees.  The  chickens— we 
had  got  a  few  back  to  the  place — usually  seen  under 
the  currant  bushes  at  this  hour  of  the  day,  were 
no  longer  there,  but  I  saw  a  laggard  pullet  hurry- 
ing under  the  barn,  where  I  knew  the  rest  of  them 
must  be.  I  looked  westward  across  the  road  and 
over  Vincent's  cornfield,  and  there  was  no  flutter 
to  a  single  blade,  nor  tremor  to  the  tassels  at  the 
top  of  the  stalks— and  the  tassel  at  the  top  of  a 
growing  cornstalk  will  move  at  the  slightest  breath. 
The  air  seemed  thin,  too.  I  drew  a  long  breath, 
getting  into  my  lungs  all  they  would  hold,  but  there 
wasn't  any  feeling  of  satisfaction  in  it.  There  was 
a  kind  of  lack  of  life.  I  looked  at  the  wing.  Mrs. 
Shannon  came  out  upon  the  little  piazza  and  David 


I20 


AN   ODD    SITUATION 


followed  her,  and  they  both  went  inside  again,  but 
before  they  did  so  I  saw  David  look  up  at  the  sky 
and  all  around  in  a  kind  of  wonder.  He  felt  the 
strangeness  of  it,  as  I  did  ;  I  could  see  that.  Then  I 
looked  away  to  the  west  and  saw  something  curious. 

Far  off,  just  above  that  dark  band  which  marks 
the  wood  in  the  countr}/,  the  sky  had  a  look  I  had 
rarely  seen  before.  Low  down  was  a  sort  of  green- 
ish-yellow hue,  which  rose  above  the  distant  wood- 
land a  little  and  extended  north  and  south  along 
about  a  quarter  of  the  whole  horizon.  There  was 
something  which  reminded  one  of  sulphur  about 
the  color.  The  space  covered  by  this  hue  was  not 
very  high,  but  seemed  rising  gradually.  And  right 
in  the  very  center  of  it  was  a  great  bunch  of  snowy 
wool. 

The  wool  was  growing  faster  than  its  field  of 
yellow-green.  It  kept  rolling  up  from  behind  and 
mounting  higher  and  higher  all  the  time  until  it 
was  a  great,  white  pillar,  broadest  at  the  top, 
reaching,  it  seemed  to  me,  a  mile  upward  in  the 
heavens.  I  had  seen  coming  storms  before,  but 
never  one  like  this,  and  I  could  not  keep  my  eyes 
from  the  thing.  I  forgot  where  1  was  and  3 11  that 
was  close  about  me.  I  could  only  see  that  dread- 
ful climbing  mountain  of  wool. 


GEMINI 


121 


By  and  by  the  huge  pillar  was  so  high  that  its 
top  seemed  to  lean  over  almost  right  above  me, 
and  the  yellow-green  at  its  base  was  getting  darker 
each  moment,  and,  all  at  once,  from  away  off  over 
the  wood,  two  or  three  flashes  of  lighting  spat  out 
in  quick  succession.  I  could  hear  no  thunder.  It 
v/as  too  far  off  for  that  yet ;  but  another  sort  of  wool, 
blacker  than  any  from  the  blackest  sheep  that  was 
ever  sheared,  came  rolling  up  now  from  around  the 
base  of  the  white  wool  mountain,  and  I  Knew  that 
an  awful  storm,  maybe  a  cyclone,  was  close  at 
hand.  But  above  and  all  about  near  us  the  sky 
was  clear  and  blue,  and  everything  \/as  as  usual, 
save  for  the  scaring  stillness.  Now  the  white  wool 
seemed  to  spread  out,  and  rhe  black  came  rushing 
up  in  a  cloud,  which  hung  low  down  in  the  middle, 
and  the  lightning  blazed  all  the  time.  But  there 
was  no  rain  yet,  nor  could  I  hear  a  sound.  And, 
just  then — just  as  the  stillness  seemed  most  solemn 
because  of  the  vast  movements  the  eye  could  see 
— there  came  to  my  ear  a  single  cry,  not  loud  nor 
very  strong,  but  distinct  enough.  I  understood  what 
it  was;^  there  is  no  other  sound  just  like  it,  and  I 
had  heard  it  once  before  in  my  life — it  was  the  cry 
of  a  new-born  babe. 

The  air  became  cold   in  a   moment    and,    in    a 


122 


AN   ODD    SITUATION 


second  as  it  seemed  the  sun  was  shut  off,  and  it 
was  almost  darkness,  and,  a  few  seconds  later, 
the  leaves  on  the  trees  tossed  a  little  in  a  ^'tful 
way,  and  there  was  silence  no  longer.  The  storm 
was  upon  us.  There  was  the  screaming  of  a  mighty 
wind  and  the  trees  bent  down  before  it,  and  a  few 
drops  of  rain  fell.  It  seemed  as  if  a  hurricane  was 
to  follow,  and  I  feared  for  everything.  Then  there 
was  a  little  pause  once  more,  and  then  almost 
blackness  came,  and  there  was  a  roar,  and  the 
storm  was  upon  us  at  its  worst. 

I  hugged  a  great  oak  post  with  arms  mortised 
through  it,  where  we  hung  up  the  hogs  at  killing 
time,  and  clung  there.  There  was  that  ^oar  all 
about  me,  and  a  cloud  of  dead  leaves  and  twigs 
swept  against  m.e  and  stung  me.  I  could  hear  the 
tearing  of  wood  as  limbs  gave  way  in  the  orchard, 
and  I  thought  of  the  house  and  was  more  fright- 
ened. I  had  reason  to  be.  There  came  a  tremend- 
ous crash  and  rending,  and  I  saw  the  roof  of  the 
wing,  in  which  lived  David  and  Alice,  lifted  up  and 
crumpled  like  paper,  in  its  age  and  weakness,  and 
swept  all  away  in  a  moment.  There  was  another 
great  gust,  and  then  within  a  second  or  two  it 
seemed  the  worst  was  over,  so  far  as  the  wind  storm 
went,    and   tne  inky  blackness  lessened  a   little, 


GEMINI 


123 


though  it  was  dark  yet,  and  the  rain  began  to  come 
down  in  scattering  drops. 

I  rushed  into  the  house  and  through  to  the  wing. 
It  was  wonderful !      The  whole  roof  was  gone   and 
the  room  was  open  to  the  sky,  but  Alice  lay    there 
in  the  bed  quietly  enough,  and  Mrs.    Shannon    sat 
near  her,  with  a  little  thing,  wrapped  up  in    some- 
thing, in  her  arms.      David  was  leaning    anxiously 
over  his  wife,  his  mother  at  his  side,  and  old    Mr. 
Mackenzie  stood,  staring,  near  the  door.      In    the 
doorway,  so  that  I  had  to  push  her  aside  as  I  broke 
in,  was  Lucinda  Briggs,      Strangely   enough,    they 
did  not  seem  terrorized  at  all.     They  were  simply 
dazed,  by  what  had  happened,  and   hadn't  moved 
yet!      I  think  I  had  the  most  sense  of  anyone  just 
then.      I  jumped  at  David  and  caught  him  by  the 
arm  and  yelled  out:      "Quick!     We  must  get  Alice 
out  of  this!"  and  he  roused  in  a  moment,      Every- 
body seemed  to    waken.      David  leaned  over    and 
took  hold  of  the    mattress    from   beneath  at    the 
head  and  I  did  the  same  thing  at  the  foot,  and  we 
lifted  all  together  and  carried  the  dear  girl  so  into 
the  next   room.      But    there   was   no   other    room 
fitted  for  her  in  the  house.      Then    out   broke   old 
Mackenzie  with  his  idea,  which  had,  at  last,  become 
a  good  one: 


124 


AN    ODD   SITUATION 


"Take  her  across  the  way !"  he  cried;  "it's  hardly 
raining  yet.  Carry  her  gently  across  the  way  to 
the  wing  in  her  old  home — to  her  own,  old  room! 
She'll  be  best  there!  Hurry,  lads!  carry  her 
gently!" 

And  we  did  it.  We  were  across  the  road  in  a 
moment,  carrying  her  as  gently  asever  woman  was 
carried  yet,  and  five  minutes  later  she  was  in  her 
own,  old  room,  and  Mrs.  Shannon  had  brought 
over  the  wee  living  thing  she  had  been  holding,  and 
there  was  a  good  roof  over  all,  and  every  comfort. 

The  rain  had  begun  to  fall  smartly  now,  but  it 
did  not  last  for  long.  It  seldom  does  rain  much 
after  a  great  summer  windstorm  such  as  had  come 
upon  us.  The  drops  ceased  falling  and  the  sun 
came  out  again  and  in  the  yard  and  all  about  the 
fields  there  was  a  greater  clamor  of  living  things 
than  there  had  been  before  in  all  the  day.  Every- 
thing seemed  rejoicing  that  all  had  ended  so  well 
and  I  am  sure  that  I  myself  was  as  glad  as  the 
cackling  chickens  in  the  yard  or  the  thrush  that 
was  making  music  from  an  elm  off  in  the  field. 
I  was  happy  that  the  crisis  for  her  we  loved  so 
was  over,  and  happier  still  that  the  great  danger 
which  had  made  my  heart  stop  beating  for  a  time 
had  passed  her  and  those  with  her.      I  had  returned 


GEMINI 


125 


to  our  own  house  and  helped  take  the  things  out  of 
the  wrecked  room  and,  coming  out  into  the  front 
yard,  saw  something  among  a  clump  of  bushes  on 
the  Canadian  side  of  the  road  which  attracted  me. 
There  is  all  through  this  northern  belt  of  country, 
a  bird,  about  as  big  as  a  catbird,  colored  the  most 
brilliant  red,  with  black  wings,  which,  though  very 
shy,  often  comes  out  of  the  dense  woods  into  the 
fields  just  after  a  summer  rain.  There  is  some 
sort  of  insect  it  likes  which  it  seems  to  find  abundant 
then.  I've  looked  in  the  books  and  found  that  this 
1  rilliant  thing  is  called:  a  "scarlet  tanager,"  though 
I  don't  suppose  one  country  boy  in  a  hundred 
knows  it.  They  call  the  beautiful  object  a  red  bird 
and  it  is  not  so  common  but  that  it  always  draws 
attention  and  makes  us  watch  while  it  is  in  sight. 
One  of  these  birds  was  in  the  clump  of  bushes  and 
I  was  admiring  it  when  I  heard  from  the  vicinity 
of  the  Cross  place  the  mot  tremendous  whoop!  I 
looked  up  and  saw  that  David  had  left  the  house 
and  was  coming  over  to  our  own  place — he  was 
already  close  to  me — while,  just  rushing  out  of  the 
house,  bareheaded  and  leaping  about  as  if  he'd 
never  been  lame  a  day  in  his  life,  was  old  man 
Mackenzie!  He  was  running  toward  us,  still 
whooping,  and  I  didn't  know  but  he  had  suddenly 


126 


AN    ODD    SITUATION 


gone  mad,  David  turned  round  a  little  alarmed, 
too,  I  think,  as  Mackenzie  dashed  down   upon   us. 

"Praise  the  Lord!"  the  old  man  shouted.  "D'ye 
hear,  mon?  Praise  the  Lord !  Hooray!  Eh,  but 
it's  a  glorious  day!" 

And  he  capered  about  more  wildly  than  ever. 
The  happy  look  on  David's  face  gave  way  to  one 
of  perplexity.  "Yes,"  he  said,  "it's  a  great  day,  of 
course, but  aren't  you  a  little  excited  over  it, father.?" 

"Excited.?"  roared  the  old  man.  "Who  wouldn't 
be?  It's  a  Canadian,  too!  D'ye  hear  me,  mon, 
it's  a  Canadian!" 

"Do  you  mean  the  baby.?"  asked  David.  "I  don't 
see  how  that  can  be.  It  was  born  on  tnis  side  of 
the  line." 

The  old  man  stared  blankly  for  a  moment,  then 
roared  again:  "Hooray!  Eh,  but  it's  a  great 
hour!  Must  I  bring  the  news  to  it's  own  father.? 
Why,  mon,  there's  another!  D'ye  mind  me, 
another!"  And  he  capered  about  again,  like  the 
old  lunatic  he  was. 

And  David  was  off  to  the  house  like  a  shot.  As 
for  me,  I'm  afraid  I  whooped  a  little,  too,  but  as 
I've  said  I  always  liked  old  Mackenzie.  And  then 
it  occurred  to  me  that  there  was  work  to  be  done 
and  I  hurried  off  toward  our  own  barn. 


GEMINI 


127 


As  I  started  I  looked' down  the  road  and  saw  at 
a  distance  a  buggy  coming  in  which  were  two  men. 
One,  I  could  see,  was  Vincent,  the  other  I  thought 
I  recognized. 


CHAPTER  XI. 


MATTERS  BECOME  COMPLICATED. 


One  little  egg  had  two  brown  flecks, 

And  one  little  egg  had  three, 
And,  O,  the  eggs  in  the  chickadee's  nest 

Were  charming  things  to  see! 

And  the  mother  bird  was  as  proud  a  bird 

As  any  bird  could  be. 
"I'll  call  one  One,  and  one  Palimpsest; 

Yes  I  will  said,  the  chickadee. 

The  little  ones  throve  uncommonly  well, 

And  nothing  at  all  went  ill, 
And  each  little  bird  pecked  a  hole  in   his  shell 

With  a  persevering  bill. 

One  pecked  away  at  the  two  brown  specks 

And  the  other  at  three;  'twas  done! 
And  the  chickadee  doubts  as  to  Palimpsests 

And  she  doesn't  know  which  is  One 

— Down  Among  The  Bushes. 

Something  like  a  lump  came  in  my  throat  as    I 

looked,  for  I  felt,  as  I  took  the   first   glance,    that 

there,  nearing  us  every  moment,    was   the   man   I 

most  dreaded  to  see  and  about  whom  I  had  a  sort 

of  what  they  call  premonition.     I    could   see   the 

128 


MATTERS  BECOME  COMPLICATED 


129 


two  men  but  indistinctly,  they  were  so  far  away 
when  I  first  looked,  but  I  just  knew,  in  some  way, 
that  one  of  them  was  Gaherty.  And  I  was  right. 
It  was  Vincent's  buckboard  which  was  coming 
down  the  road  and  as  it  got  nearer  I  saw  plainly 
enough  that  the  two  men  in  it  were  Vincent  and 
the  officer.  As  they  went  by  Gaherty  looked 
squarely  at  me  and  there  was  a  grin  upon  his  face, 
something  as  much  as  to  say:  "Well,  my  boy,  I 
said  you'd  hear  from  me  again,  and  here  I  am!" 
Vincent  himself  looked  pleased,  too,  as  far  as  his 
peaked  face  could  show  any  feeling. 

I  went  up  toward  the  Mackenzie  house  with  a 
little  load  on  my  mind  and  met  David  at  the  door- 
way. I  told  him  what  I  had  seen  and,  though  he 
was  sober-faced  for  a  moment,  it  didn't  last.  He 
was  too  full  of  happiness  to  be  reasonable.  "What 
does  it  matter,  old  man.?"  he  half  shouted  as  he 
grasped  my  hand;  "we'll  get  through  with  all  these 
customs  troubles  somehow — and,  man,  it  is  twins! 
There  are  two  boys  in  the  room  with  their  mother 
there!  Think  of  that!  I'm  the  father  of  a  pair  of 
baby  boys!  They  belong  to  Alice  and  me!  What 
do  I  care  for  customs  or  customs  officers  or  all  that 
may  come  of  them !"  And  the  radiance  on  the  big 
young  fellow's  face  did  me  a  world  of  good. 


I30 


AN    ODD    SITUATION 


I  laughed  to  myself,  as  I  went  out,  at  the  young 
father's  enthusiasm  but  I  laughed  too  soon.  I 
should  have  waited  for  a  week  or  two  until,  as, 
they  say,  I  had  sized  up  my  own  self  better.  I 
never  expected  to  become  silly  or  unreasoning  over 
a  baby  or  over  a  pair  of  babies,  but  then  these 
were  not  babies  of  the  ordinary  kind,  at  least  so  it 
seemed  to  all  of  us  as  we  became  acquainted  with 
them.  There  had  been  fine  babies  before,  I  suppose, 
at  least  I  had  heard  people  speak  of  them,  but  it 
seems  to  me  that  there  could  never  have  been  any 
quite  equal  to  this  sturdy  young  American  and  his 
brother,  the  Canadian.  The  young  pigs  made 
themselves  perfectly  at  home  from  the  first  and 
were  rulers  of  the  whole  place  before  they  were 
forty-eighty  hours  old.  They  were  such  sturdy 
little  villains,  and  so  hungry,  a^id  bawled  or  fed 
with  such  earnestness  that  one  couldn't  help  fall- 
ing in  love  with  them  for  their  very  recklessness. 
And  something  dreadful  ' happened  which  made  the 
couple  all  the  more  in'ercsting.  The  elder  of  the 
babies,  the  one  born  on  the  American  side,  had  a 
little  blue  ribbon  tied  about  its  wrist  by  Mrs. 
Shannon  the  nurse,  and,  though  without  that  you 
could  no  more  have  told  them  apart  than  you 
could  have  done  two  peas,  yet  marked  so,  we  com- 


MATTKUS  BECOME  COMPLICATED 


131 


pared  them  often,  for  the  first  day  01  two,  and 
there  was  a  lot  of  nonsense  between  David  and 
his  father-in-law  as  to  the  merits  of  the  two,  old 
man  Mackenzie  insisting  that  the  Canadian  had  a 
triHe  the  better  legs. 

It  went  on  that  way  until  Lucinda  Brij:fgs,  who 
worshiped  the  youngsters,  was  told,  one  after- 
noon, to  bring  a  new  ribbon  for  the  American's 
wrist,  the  one  first  put  on  having  become  soiled 
from  the  young  gentleman's  feeble  efforts  to 
swallow  his  hand.  She  went  oil  in  her  plunging  way, 
but  just  before  she  started  must  needs  strip  off  the 
ribbon  on  the  baby's  wrist,  with  some  idea,  I  sup- 
pose that  she  would  so  save  time.  She  came  rushing 
back  with  the  fresh  ribuon  five  minutes  later, 
when,  lo  and  behold  the  American  baby  was  not 
where  she  had  left  him!  Mrs.  Shannon  had  them 
both  together —the  two  babies,  I  mean — and  was 
engaged  in  some  arrangement  of  bandages,  and  to 
save  her  life  she  couldn't  tell  which  was  which !  She 
had  paid  no  attention  to  the  thing,  for  she  hadn't 
noticed  that  Lucinda  Briggs  had  taken  off  the 
ribbon — and  there  we  were!  No  one  could  tell 
which  of  those  children  was  born  on  the  Canadian 
or  which  on  the  American  side  and  no  one  knows 
to  this  day.     Old  Mackenzie   was  much   cut   up 


132 


AN    ODD    SITUATION 


I 
I 


about  it,  but  I  think  David  was  rather  glad.  "They 
haven't  been  named  yet,"  he  said  to  his  father-in- 
law,  "and  pretty  soon  we  shall  be  able  to  tell  them 
apart,  anyhow,  and  it's  just  as  well,  I  guess,  that 
we  don't  really  know  which  was  born  first.  It 
may  save  jealousy  sometime,  and  it  leaves  a 
pleasant  thing  to  guess  at.  It  isn't  as  if  it  were  in 
England,  where  the  oldest  son  would  have  the 
advantage." 

But  old  man  Mackenzie  still  grumbled  a  little 
and  said  it  was  a  shame.  Lucinda  Briggs  was 
almost  heart-broken  over  what  she  had  done,  at 
first,  but  was  bright  enough  after  she  had  confessed 
to  her  mistress.  The  dear  woman  in  the  bed  was 
actually  radiant  when  she  heard  of  it.  "I'm  very, 
very  glad  of  it,"  she  said;  "it  is  better  that  way." 
And  we  all  agreed  it  vvas  co  for  never  was  there  a 
queen  who  ruled  a  people  more  surely  than  did 
our  Alice  all  of  us. 

But  even  a  pair  of  lusty  American-Canadian 
twins  cannot  be  all  there  is  in  the  world,  for  any 
great  length  of  time,  and  before  those  young  people 
were  a  week  old  David  began  to  f^et  a  little  sense 
again,  and  could  muster  up  enough  reason  to  listen 
to  me  when  I  got  a  chance  to  talk  to  him  of  the 
probable  trouble  near  at   hand.     Then   he   talked 


MATTERS  BECOME  COMPLICATED 


133 


with  a  man  who  made  him  think  in  earnest.  Jen- 
nison  came  again. 

The  Canadian  broke  in  upon  us  in  his  breezy 
style,  coming  up  to  the  house  just  as  if  he  thought 
we  would  be  glad  to  see  him,  and  congratulated 
David  on  the  twins.  He  said  he  didn't  have  any 
children  of  his  own,  which  was  rather  a  disgrace 
when  they  so  needed  more  population  in  Canada, 
but  that  he  liked  babies,  and  always  rather  envied 
the  owner  of  one.  When  a  man  had  two  on  his 
hands — well,  he  was  in  great  luck,  that  was  all. 
And  he  looked  as  if  he  meant  what  he  said. 

His  first  talk  over,  Jennison  became  quite  an- 
other sort  of  man,  but  I'll  give  him  credit  for  com- 
ing to  the  point  fairly  and  decently:  "I  didn't  like 
the  trip  back  here,"  he  explained,  "but  I  had  to 
come,  li's  bread  and  butter,  I  put  it  to  you  as  it 
is,  so  that  you'll  know  whai  you  have  to  look  out 
for.  Vincent  or  Gaherty,  or  Vincent  and  Gah- 
erty,  one  or  both  of  them — I  don't  know,  and  it 
doesn't  make  any  difference — or  some  one  else, 
has  been  stirring  things  up  again,  and  reporting 
you  as  violating  the  law  right  along.  So  Gaherty 
has  been  sent  here  and  you'll  be  watched  pretty 
closely,  for  yours  is  to  be  made  a  sort  of  test  case, 
and  I  have  been  sent    here    just    to    hold    up    the 


134 


AN    ODD    SITUATION 


Canadian  end.  The  reports  came  to  us,  I  think, 
the  same  as"  they  did  to  the  American  authorities. 
And  all  I  have  to  say  is,  as  I  said  before,  that  I'll 
do  my  duty.  I  must  do  that,  and  you  must  be 
careful.  Of  course  I'll  have  little  to  look  out  for, 
compared  with  Gaherty,  for  what  any  man  on  the 
line  wants,  nine  times  in  ten,  is  not  to  get  some- 
thing into  Canada,  but  to  get  something  out  of 
Canada.  You  know  that  as  well  as  I  do.  But 
please  don't  try  to  get  anything  dutiable  in,  else  I 
shall  have  to  come  down  on  you." 

We  both  recognized  the  man's  fairness  and  good- 
heartedness,  as  we  had  done  before,  and  we  told 
him  so.  He  went  away  whistling  and  contented 
with  himself,  and  took  up  his  abode  again  at  the 
Latimer  place.  Each  morning  he  would  come  out 
and  walk  down  to  the  crossing  and  stroll  up  in 
front  of  our  place  and  down  to  the  road,  and,  I 
dare  say,  he  kept  up  a  pretty  bright  look-out  dur- 
ing the  day,  but  that  was  all  we  saw  of  him.  He 
acted,  in  a  general  way,  just  as  he  did  the  first 
time  he  came.      It  wasn't  that  way  with   Gaherty. 

The  very  first  day  Gaherty  had  setttled  down 
again  at  Vincent's  he  came  "snoopin",  as  Lucinda 
Briggs  called  it,  all  about  the  place.  He  wandered 
up  and  down  the  road  and  peered  over    the  fences, 


MATTERS  BECOME  COMPLICATED 


135 


and  seemed  to  be  troubled  only  because  he  couldn't 
actually  come  upon  the  farm,  either  on  the  Ameri- 
can or  the  Canadian  side,  and  follow  us   about    all 
the  time  and  see  just  what  we  were  doing.      If   we 
went  to  wo*-]'  in  any  particular  field  we  wouldn't  be 
there  half  an  hour  before  we    could    see    the    man 
standing  up  against  the  fence  on   the  side   of    the 
road  nearest   us  and  pretending  to  read   a  news- 
paper, or  something  of   that    sort,    though  it    was 
needless  and  silly,  for  we  knew  what  he  was  there 
for,  and  he  knew  that    we    knew.      He    made    me 
almost    nervous    with    having   him    constantly    in 
sight,  and  I  could  see  that  it  gritted  David  a  little. 
As  for  John   Cross,  he  said  never  a  word.    He  was 
becoming    more    silent    and    more    yellow-looking 
than  ever  now,  and  I  feared  that  he  would  soon  be 
sick  abed.      He  did  his  work,  though,  just   as  well 
as  ever,  as  far  as  I  could  see,  and  because  he   said 
nothing  about  Gaherty  I  hoped  he    had    got    over 
his   rage    against    that    evil-faced   nuisance,    and 
wouldn't  run  against  him  if  he  could  help   it.      He 
would  stop  work  sometimes  for  a  moment  and  look 
across  the  field   to   the   fence  just   beyond   which 
Gaherty  was  making  himself  comfortable,  but  after 
looking  he  would  only  apply  himself    to   his    work 
again  and  say  nothing.   "The  man  is  getting  sense," 


136 


AN    ODD    SITUATION 


I  would  think  to  myself.  I  didn't  know  as  much 
then  about  some  things  as  I  was  compelled  to  learn 
afterward. 

So  things  drifted  along  for  th~ee  or  four  weeks, 
and  nothing  happened  of  any  importance.  We 
were  not  disturbed  by  either  of  the  customs  officers,, 
because,  as  a  matter-of-fact,  we  did  nothing  which 
would  give  them  a  chance.  The  grain  had  about 
all  been  stored,  since  most  of  it  had  been  raised  on 
the  American  side,  and  the  threshing  began  and 
was  finished  without  interference  from  anybody. 
The  twins  grew  as  I  don't  believe  babies  ever 
grew  before,  and  were  sweet  and  fat  and  clamor- 
ous in  their  big  cradle,  and  their  dear  mother  was 
out  ruling  her  household  again,  and  thinking  of 
David  and  for  the  comfort  of  everybody,  as  usual. 
Of  course  we  didn't  see  quite  as  much  of  her  as  we 
once  did,  for  the  twins  were  extraordinarily  fond  o£ 
her,  too,  and  would  make  things  lively  if  she  staid 
away  too  long.  She  had  David's  mother,  though, 
and  Mrs.  Shannon  still  staid  with  us — David  in- 
sisted on  that — and  so,  except  that  there  were  more 
people  of  importance  in  the  house,  matters  stood 
just  as  they  had  done  in  early  summer,  but  I  knew 
it  couldn't  last. 

There  were  things  on  the    Canadian    side   we 


MATTERS  BECOME  COMPLICATED 


m 


needed  over  with  us,  and  we  couldn't  always  get 
the  cattle  to  drift  over  accidentally  when  we  needed 
them.  Besides,  the  fowls  were  nearly  all  on  the 
wrong  side  again,  and  that  worried  Lucinda  Briggs. 
There  were  hardly  eggs  enough  found  on  our  terri- 
tory to  make  cakes  with.  We  hadn't  eaten  any 
eggs  for  a  month  after  Alice  was  brought  back  to 
her  own  home  in  David's  house — the  wing  had 
been  repaired  and  put  in  prettier  shape  than  ever — 
until  one  day  we  all  went  over,  the  whole  house- 
hold of  us,  to  John  Cross'  place,  carrying  the  twins 
along,  and  there  had  a  great  dinner,  got  up  by 
Alice  and  Mrs.  Long,  of  eggs  and  such  things  as 
were  on  that  farm  and  not  on  our  own.  It  was  after 
we  had  come  back  that  same  day  that  Lucinda  had 
a  talk  with  me. 

"How  long's  this  thing  goin'  to  last.?"  said 
Lucinda. 

'How  long  is  what  going  to  last.?" 

"I  mean  how  long  is  it  goin'  to  be  'fore  I  can  git 
eggs  again.  I'm  afeared  to  do  it  at  night  any 
more,  for  I  know  that  man's  watchin'  for  me,  but 
we've  got  to  have  'em.  Jason,  ain't  there  some 
way  you  can  help?  You're  counted  a  smart  man 
'bout  things  on  a  farm.  Tell  me  how  I'm  goin' 
to  git  them  eggs.?" 


138 


AN    ODD    SITUATION 


I  thought  a  good  deal  over  what  Lucinda  Briggs 
said  to  me,  and  the  next  day  I  told  her  I  was  going 
to  try  to  help  her  out,  at  least  about  the  eggs.  I 
thought  I  knew  a  way.  I  told  her  about  it,  and 
the  girl  was  tickled  amazingly  over  the  plan.  And 
then  I  went  to  work. 


CHAPTER  XII. 


JASON'S  HENS'  NESTS. 

"Cackle,  cackle,  cackle!"     Then 

This  you  may  decide  on,  , 

There's  an  egg;  if  it's  a  hen; 

She  can  be  relied  on. 

"Cackle,  cackle!"     Some  one's  done 

Something  worth  the  telling, 
And  the  boasting  has  begun. 

Hear  the  cackle  swelling! 

"Cackle!"     Is  it  worth  it?     No; 

And  it's  past  believing, 
Even  now,  that  cackling  so 

Often  is  deceiving! 

—Sijoi'ns  of  the  Times. 

I  thought  the  matter  over  carefully.  The  chickens 
and  the  guinea-hens  and  turkeys,  even  the  ducks, 
were  all  on  the  Mackenzie  farm,  and  liked  to  stay 
there  best.  By  feeding  them  about  our  own  place 
in  the  winter,  we  had  got  them  to  stay  about  the 
American  side  for  a  time,  but  as  soon  as  spring 
came  th-y  were  off  to  their  old  haunts  again,  and 
made  their  nests  where  they  had  them  the  summer 

139 


I40 


AN    ODD    SITUATION 


before.  Even  the  chickens  we  owned  before  David 
and  Ahce  were  married  had  gone  with  the  lot,  and 
in  our  own  barn,  or  anywhere  about  the  place,  one 
couldn't  find  a  hen's  nest.  The  fowls  of  all  sorts 
would  run  over  both  farms  in  their  feeding — one  of 
their  favorite  scratching-places  was  among  our  own 
currant-bushes,  where  you  could  see  half  a  dozen 
hens  lying  and  wallowing  in  the  dry  soil  any  after- 
noon— but  they  laid  their  eggs  in  the  Mackenzie 
barn  or  sheds,  and  raised  their  young  broods  there. 
There  wasn't  a  manger  over  there  or  a  promising 
nook  of  the  hay-mow  that  hadn't  a  nest  in  it.  The 
problem  now  was  to  get  all  the  fresh  eggs  on  our 
side. 

That  part  of  the  garden  where  the  rows  of 
currant-bushes  were,  and  which  the  hens  so  much 
liked  to  visit,  was  just  northwest  of  the  house  and 
close  to  the  road  on  the  line.  Right  across  from 
this,  John  Cross  had  raised  a  lot  of  tomatoes  in  a 
corner  of  the  field,  and  this  locality  the  hens 
thought  well  of,  too.  They  would  come  down 
from  the  Mackenzie  barn  in  the  morning  and  invade 
the  patch,  and  be  all  over  it  a  good  deal  of  the 
day.  I  suppose  they  found  plenty  of  bugs  there, 
and  I  know  that  they  pecked  away  ^t  the  red  toma- 
toes, too,  occasionally.     So  at  these  corners  of  the 


JASON'S    HENS      NESTS 


141 


two  places  there  were  to  be  found  a  lot  of  hens 
most  of  the  time.  I  made  up  my  mind  to  operate 
in  this  locality. 

I'm  something  of  a  carpenter,  and  I  got  a  lot  of 
boards  and  went  to  work  making  boxes.  I  made 
twenty  or  thirty  of  them,  and  this  was  their  style: 
Every  box  had  a  top  which  reached  out  over  the 
edges  a  little  to  keep  out  the  wet,  and  in  the  side 
of  each,  close  to  the  bottom,  was  a  hole  about  eight 
inches  square.  On  the  bottom  of  each  one  I  put 
a  lot  of  hay,  and  hollowed  it  out  and  smoothed  it 
in  the  center  until  it  looked  like  a  pretty  good  hen's 
nest.  These  boxes  I  set  in  a  row  near  the  currant- 
bushes,  and  then  all  about  them  I  scattered  chaff 
and  hay  and  straw  thickly,  and  put  a  little  grain 
about,  too,  so  that  the  whole  thing  would  seem 
kind  o'  barn-like,  or  shed-like,  and  natural  to  the 
hens.  Then  I  put  into  the  hollow  in  the  hay  of 
every  box  one  egg — a  nest-egg,  as  they  call  it  in  the 
country.  These  Lucinda  Briggs  got  from  a  neigh- 
bor beyond  Vincent's  place.  There  were  as  fine  a 
lot  of  hen's  nests  as  could  be  found  in  the  country, 
and  Lucinda  Briggs  and  I  waited  for  what  would 
happen.  So  did  Gaherty.  He  had  been  watching 
the  whole  performance  and  knew  just  what  I  was 
trying  to  do  as  well  as  I  but  he  didn't  say  anything. 


142 


AN    ODD    SITUATION 


He  couldn't.  We  were  doing  a  little  carpenter 
work  on  our  own  ground.  If  certain  Canadian 
hens  came  visiting,  who  could  help  it? 

But  the  hens  didn't  come.  That  was  the  mean 
part  of  it.  They  would  visit  the  currant-bushes 
as  usual,  and  roll  about  in  the  sand,  and  would 
scratch  among  the  hay  and  straw  I  had  left  about 
the  nests  and  eat  the  grain  they  found  there,  and 
the  inquisitive  ones  among  them  would  peer  into 
the  nests,  and  some  of  them  would  even  step  inside 
and  come  out  again,  looking  surprised;  but  never 
an  egg  could  we  find  in  those  same  nests.  The 
yard  was  a  good  enough  place  to  visit  and  scratch 
in,  but  you  could  see  that  the  hens  didn't  think 
of  it  in  any  other  way.  The  Mackenzie  barn  and 
sheds  were  good  enough  for  them  for  all  business 
purposes. 

Gaherty  could  see  that  the  thing  didn't  work, 
and  chuckled  openly.  Then  I  got  mad.  I'd  started 
out  to  do  a  thing  and  I  didn't  like  to  be  beaten. 
Lucinda  Briggs  was  almost  heart-broken  over  the 
failure,  and  I  felt  that,  my  reputation  was  suffering 
a  little.  I  thought  over  the  case  for  days,  and 
concluded  to  try  a  new  dodge  on  those  hens. 

I  told  John  Cross  of  what  I  was  going  to  try  and 
that  I  wanted   him    to    help    me.      I    wanted    his 


jason's  hens'  nests 


143 


youngsters  to  help  me,  too.  I  went  over  to  the 
Mackenzie  place  one  morning,  and  we  all  went  out 
to  the  barn,  and  when  we  had  got  through  with 
our  demonstration  there  wasn't  a  fowl  of  any  sort 
in  that  barn  nor  in  any  shed  about  the  place. 
Furthermore,  there  wasn't  a  chance  left  for  any- 
thing the  size  of  a  hen  to  get  into  again.  We  closed 
every  door  and  we  nailed  slats  across  every  open 
window.  The  only  place  left  open  which  they 
could  visit  was  a  big,  open  wagon-shed  where  there 
were  a  lot  of  perches,  to  which  the  turkeys  had 
taken  a  fancy.  And  John  Cross  was  told  not  to 
allow  the  barn  or  shed  doors  to  stay  open  at  all, 
and  the  children  were  told  to  drive  away  any 
chickens  they  saw  about  the  barn  or  sheds  at  any 
time.  Our  barn-doors  were  left  open,  and  then 
Lucinda  Briggs  and  I  got  interested  again. 

I  could  hear  a  racket  from  the  Mackenzie  place 
all  the  rest  of  the  day,  after  we  had  closed  the 
doors  as  I  have  told.  There  would  be  a  squalling 
and  cackling,  and  I  could  hear  the  shouting  of  the 
children.  The  job  the  tow-headed  young  repro- 
bates had  been  given  just  suited  them.  No  danger 
that  they  would  neglect  a  chance  to  chase  chickens ! 
That  afternoon  the  yard  about  the  currant-bushes 
was  crowded  with  hens,  and,  after  supper,    I  told 


144 


AN   ODD    SITUATION 


Lucinda  we'd  go  out  and  see  about  things.  And 
something  had  happened.  In  two  of  the  nests  we 
found  an  extra  egg. 

Lucinda  Briggs  got  excited.  "I  knew  we'd  git 
'em!"  :)he  said,  "'.  knew  it!  And  we've  got  that 
man  Gaherty,  too!  He'll  die!  he'll  just  die  when 
he  sees  what  the  hens  are  doing!"  And  she  danced 
around  among  the  bushes  until  I  was  afraid  she'd 
fall  over  the  boxes,  or  do  something  ridiculous. 
She  was  as  bad  as  a  cow  in  the  garden. 

Well,  we  concluded  to  leave  the  eggs  in  the 
nest,  just  as  a  sort  of  encouragement  to  those  tw 
hens,  whichever  they  were,  and  I  made  Lucinc. 
promise  she  wouldn't  go  near  the  bushes  in  the 
day-time  for  a  day  or  two.  She  went  out  in  the 
night,  though,  and  said  there  were  eggs  in  a 
dozen  of  the  nests,  at  least,  and  the  next  day  I 
had  stumbled  upon  one  nest  in  our  own  barn. 
There  was  no  rest  for  the  hens  except  in  the  fields 
or  among  the  currant-bushes  or  in  our  own  barns, 
and  within  a  week  they  had  practically  changed 
their  abode,  for  all  family  purposes,  I  went  out 
to  the  garden  just  after  dinner  one  day  to  have  a 
good  look  at  them,  and  called  Lucinda  Briggs,  as 
usual.  In  that  enterprise  she  was  partner  with 
me,  in  a  way,  and  I  liked  to  enjoy  it  with  her  in 
company. 


Jason's  hens'  nests 


145 


There  were  only  a  few  hens  visible,  when  we  first 
went  out,  but  there  were  a  great  lot  of  them  work- 
ing their  way  down  through  John  Cross'  tomato 
patch  on  the  other  side,  and  as  they  got  close  to 
the  fence  they  suddenly  took  the  fancy  all  together, 
as  hens  will,  and  came  rushing  across  the  road  in 
a  flock,  with  heads  stretched  out  and  much  cluck- 
ing and  chattering  and  self-congratulation.  They 
came  in  among  the  bushes,  and  some  of  them  fell 
to  scratching  and  digging  about,  and  by,  and  by,  a 
whole  lot  slipped  quietly  into  th<  nests.  A  little 
later,  there  stepped  out  of  one  of  the  boxes  a  pullet, 
buff  colored  with  white  flecks  and  with  a  first-class 
voice,  and  began  cackling  violently  and  telling  all 
the  world  that  there  was  a  fresh  egg  inside.  "That's 
a  great  pullet,"  said  Lucinda;  "She  lays  kind  o' 
yellow  eggs.   They  ain't  very  big,  but  she's  reg'lar." 

We  stood  there  looking  and  chuckling  to  our- 
selves over  how  smart  we  were,  when  I  noticed 
another  lot  of  chickens  drifting  down  through  the 
field  and  across  the  road.  They  started  to  run 
over  in  a  bunch,  just  as  the  others  had  done,  when 
there  fell  among  thjm  suddenly  a  big  lump  of  hard 
clay,  and  they  flew  off,  squalling,  every  way.  The 
thing  astonished  me.  I  looked  up  and  down  but 
couldn't  see  anybody.  Yet  I  had  never  known 
lumps  of  clay  to  fall  out  of  the  sky. 

10 


«i 


146 


AN    ODD    SITUATION 


I  went  ap  nearer  the  road  and  looked  again. 
Not  far  from  vyhere  I  was  standing  and  close  to 
the  fence  was  a  big  clump  of  elderberry  bushes, 
and  looking  out  of  those  bushes,  I  could  see, 
plainly  enough  now,  the  face  of  Gaherty.  He  saw 
me  at  the  same  time  and,  brazen  as  he  was  gener- 
ally, seemed,  I  thought,  a  trifle  confused.  I  climbed 
the  fence  and  went  along  to  where  he  stood.  As 
I  came  up  he  stepped  out  into  the  roadway. 

"Don't  you  think  you're  in  rather  small  busi- 
ness.'"'  I  said. 

"What  do  you  mean.'"  he  answered. 

"I  mean  that  you  threw  a  lump  of  clay  at  that 
lot  of  hens  just  n6w.  What  did  you  do  it  for.? 
They're  not  your  hens.  They  belong  to  David 
Long,  and  I  work  for  him.  It  doesn't  matter 
whether  it  is  a  hen  or  a  horse,  I'm  bound  to  take 
care  of  his  property.  And  I  want  to  tell  you,  right 
here,  that,  even  if  you  are  a  government  officer, 
you'd  better  be  a  little  careful!  You  can't  go 
outside  your  duty,  not  an  inch,  round  here!  I  tell 
you  that.  What  were  you  throwing  at  the  hens 
for.?" 

He  grumbled  out  something  about  there  being 
no  harm  in  a  man's  throwing  a  lump  of  clay  at  a 
lot  of  hens,  for  fun,  as    long  as  he  didn't  hurt  any 


JASON  S    HENS      NESTS 


147 


of  them.      "You' are  a  tricky  lot,  anyway,"  he  wound 
up  with. 

Then  I  got  mad.  I  told  him  he  was  about  as 
big  a  sneak  and  about  as  mean-spirited  and  mali- 
cious as  any  man  I  ever  saw  and  that  I  didn't 
think  it  would  be  at  all  out  of  the  way  if  I  gave 
him  a  reasonably  good  thrashing,  there  and  then. 
I  was  older  than  he  was  but  I  thought  I  could  do 
it  easily  enough.  And  just  as  I  said  that  I  heard 
someone  behind  me  yell,  "Hooray!" 

I  looked  around  and  there  sat  Lucinda  Briggs, 
as  large  as  life,  on  the  top  rail  of  the  ience.  She 
had  climbed  up  there  to  hear  and  see  all  that 
passed,  and  was  getting  earnest.  Her  face  was 
fairly  beaming. 

"Lick  him,  Jason!"  she  said. 

That  ridiculous  picture  rather  helped  to  bring  me 
to  reason.  I  didn't  want  to  get  into  any  difficulty 
with  the  man  unless  it  was  absolutely  necessary. 
He  was  evil-disposed  enough  naturally  and  there 
was  no  use  in  doing  anything  to  make  him  worse. 

I  cooled  off  a  little. 

"You  were  only  mad,"  I  said,  "because  the  hens 
have  taken  to  laying  on  this  side  and  w^  can  use 
our  own  eggs  without  having  to  pay  five  cents  a 
do2en  duty  on  them.     It  grits  you  to    see  decent 


148 


AN    ODD    SITUATION 


people  getting  along  in  a  decent  way  and  it  grits 
you  to  lose  a  chance  to  make  trouble.  That's  just 
how  it  stands.  Now  I  want  to  tell  you  this.  I 
don't  suppose  we  can  stop  you  from  hanging 
around  here  and  annoying  us  by  prying  into  every- 
thing, and  I  don't  suppose  you'll  show  any  mercy 
if  3'ou  get  some  charge  that  will  stick  against  us. 
I  do  suppose,  though,  that  you've  got  to  keep 
within  your  rights.  If  ever  I  see  you  again  doing 
anything  to  interfere  with  us,  even  if  it's  no  more 
than  throwing  a  clod  at  a  chicken,  I'll  lick  you 
within  an  inch  of  your  life;  at  least  I'll  try  to  lick 
you." 

The  man  showed  his  temper  then,  and  an  ugly 
temper  it  was:  ''Its  lucky  for  you,  old  man,"  he 
snarled,  "that  you  didn't  forget  yourself  and  dare 
to  make  an  assault  on  me.  You  wouldn't  have 
had  much  of  a  fight;  you'd  have  only  got  some  of 
this." 

He  lifted  his  hand,  which  had  been  resting  in 
the  side  pocket  of  his  loose  coat,  and  in  it  was  a 
big  revolver.  That  made  me  angrier  than  ever, 
but  there  was  nothing  more  to  that  encounter.  I 
told  the  man  that  he  might  carry  a  whole  arsenal 
if  he  wanted  to  but  that  he  had  to  respect  property 
around  there.     As  I  turned,  I  couldn't  help  laugh- 


JASON  S    HENS     NESTS 


149 


ing,  mad  as  1  was.  Lucinda  Briggs  had  seen  the 
pistol  and  had  gone  off  the  fence,  like  a  turtle  off 
a  log,  and  was  making  for  the  house,  tearing 
through  the  currant  bushes  and  scattering  the 
chickens   in  all  directions. 

And  so  the  great  egg  question  was  settled.  It 
wasn't  a  very  big  thing  among  the  troubles  we  had 
upon  us,  but  what  happened  in  connection  with  it 
showed  the  case  we  were  in  and  what  we  had  to 
expect.  As  for  the  fowls,  they  stuck  to  their  new 
love.  The  barn  became  their  headquarters  as  the 
weather  got  colder  and  by  early  fall  they  were 
Americans,  every  one  of  them. 


CHAPTER  XIII. 

VARIOUS  SMALL  HArPENINGS. 

I've  had 
A  fad 
Of  late,  in  puffing  at  a  hubble-bubble, 

Chiboque,  nargileh,  hookah — what  you  will — 
Deeming  the  pleasure  double, 

Inhaling  smoke  through  perfumed  water;  still 
I'm  not  quite  assured;  I  only  know 

That  as  I  lie,  while  smoke-wreaths  upward  curl, 
I  make  a  striking  oriental  show. 

And  deeply  have  impressed  the  hired  girl. 
I  caught  her  talking  with  the  girl  next  door, 
Who  thus  a  vaunting  testimony  bore; 
.'My  master  smokes  a  meerchaum  pipe  as  brown 
As  coffee;  'tis  the  finest  pipe  in  town!" 
Then  Nora,  tossing  back  her  hair  unkempt. 
Replied  in  tones  of  withering  contempt; 
"Meershom!  Phwats  that?  Its  not  worth  while  to  talk 

The' day  wid  ye! 
Meershom,  indade!  Bedad  Oi'llhear  no  more! 
Me  masther's  got  some  sthoyle  about  him,  for 
He  smokes  a  hose  fixed  on  a  cushpidor! 
Go  'way  wid  ye!" 

— Household  Treasures. 

There's    no    use   talking — after   that  enterprise 

with  the  hens,  Lucinda  Briggs  thought  I    was    the 

greatest  man  in  the  world,  and  conducted    herself 

accordingly.     I  had  a  lot  of  fun  with  her  over   the 

150 


VARIOUS    SMALL    H/.PPENINGS 


151 


manner  in  which  she  got  away  after  seeing  Gaher- 
ty's  pistol,  but  I  couldn't  make  her  angry,  ready 
as  she  usually  was  for  any  difficulty.  She  thought 
I'd  showed  talent  with  the  hens'  nests  and  in  get- 
ting the  fowls  over  to  us  so,  and  that  settled  it.  I 
was  a  hero  with  her  after  that,  and,  as  it  came  out, 
her  opinion  of  me  put  plenty  of  work  on  my  hands 
in  the  long-run. 

It  got  to  be  just  that  time  in  the  year  when 
things  are  brown,  but  when  the  trees  are  not  bare 
yet;  when  there  are  still  plenty  of  birds  to  be  seen, 
and  the  high-holders — "yellow-hammers"  some 
folks  call  them — are  weaving  up  and  down  in  their 
flight  from  fence  to  fence,  or  stub  to  tree,  when  the 
crows  and  blue-jays  think  they  own  the  earth,  and 
when  the  cows  look  through  the  fence  at  the 
pumpkins  in  the  cornfield  and  give  a  kind  of  whin- 
ing bellow.  No  one  knows  better  than  a  cow  that 
pumpkin  is  good  to  eat. 

So  the  fall  work  was  upon  us,  and  it  came  that 
we  had  need  for  some  things  not  saleable,  or,  at 
least,  things  that  we  did  not  wish  to  sell,  which 
were  grown  on  the  Canadian  side.  Between  his 
quail  and  squirrel-shooting  and  his  occasional  visits 
to  Canadian  towns  near  by  Jennison  found  time 
to  keep  a  tolerably  close  eye  on  what   we   did  on 


152 


AN    ODD    SITUATION 


the  Mackenzie  farm,  and  he  asked  me  one  day 
what  we  were  going  to  do  with  the  pumpkins — we 
had  raised  a  great  lot  on  that  side — and  with  a 
stack  of  good  clover  we  had  in  one  of  the  Macken- 
zie fields.  I  told  him  I  thought  we'd  feed  them 
to  the  cattle  very  soon,  as  we  wanted  to  save 
what  was  in  the  barns  for  winter  use.  It  wasn't 
late  enough  for  hay-feeding,  for  there  was  pretty 
good  pasture  yet,  but  the  pumpkins  would  help 
out  the  cows  with  their  fall  milk.  He  asked  me 
how  that  could  be  done,  as  we'd  got  all  the  cattle 
on  our  side  the  line,  and  I  told  him  to  wait  and 
see.  He  only  laughed  and  said  we  were  an  odd 
lot, and  then  began  telling  what  a  pretty  wing- shot 
he'd  made  at  a  late  wood  duck  he'd  started  up 
down  the  creek  the  day  before. 

As  a  matter  of  fac-t,  I  didn't  know  what  to  do 
about  the  pumpkins  myself.  The  cows  needed 
them,  or  would  do  so  soon,  and  we'd  sown  them 
pretty  thickly,  with  regard  to  this  same  use  of 
them  late  in  the  season.  I  talked  with  David 
about  them,  but  he  only  laughed  and  said  he 
guessed  a  man  who  could  get  eggs  over  could  get 
pumpkins  over,  too,  somehow,  and  that  he  would 
leave  the  management  of  the  thing  to  me.  And 
there  I  was  with  a  worso  puzzle  on  my  mind  than  I 


VARIOUS    SMALL    HAPPENINGS 


153 


had  when  Lucinda    Briggs   came  to   me   for   help 
about  the  eggs. 

I  plotted  and  planned  for  several  days  without 
any  good  coming  of  it.  I  was  resolved  that  we 
shouldn't  actually  violate  the  law,  and  I  knew 
that  if  we  drove  the  cattle  across  the  line,  or  even 
opened  the  fences  to  let  them  go  across,  Gaherty 
would  seize  them  upon  some  excuse,  and  that, 
showing  the  intent  of  the  thing,  he  might  really  be 
able  to  have  some  sort  of  a  case  against  us. 
There  is  a  difference  between  a  cow  driven  or 
coaxed  across  a  line  like  that,  and  a  hen  which 
can  fly,  and  which  even  the  law  doesn't  presume 
anyone  can  manage.  So  I  wandered  about  in  a 
quandary  all  the  time. 

One  day  I  was  walking  along  the  road  toward 
the  east  field,  and  still  racking  my  brains  over  this 
problem  of  the  pum.pkins,  for  I  could  see  them 
gleaming  out  in  the  field  close  by  me  to  the  north, 
when,  as  I  reached  the  place  where  the  road 
turned  a  little,  I  happened  to  think  that  I  had  left 
the  American  side  and  was  now  on  Canadian  soil. 
I  told  in  the-  beginning  of  this  clumsy  story,  and 
tried  to  show  in  a  rude  map  1  drew,  how,  because 
of  the  creek,  the  roadway  turned  out  and  took  in, 
on  a  curve,  quite  a  strip  of  Canadian  land,  so  that 


154 


AN    ODD    SITUATION 


\ 


the  fence  on  the  Long  farm  at  its  greatest  bend 
was  really  a  rod  or  so  over  into  the  Dominion. 
There  was  one  little  stretch  of  it  of  about  fifty  feet 
which  was,  as  near  as  anyone  could  tell  by  sight- 
ing along  the  roadway,  almost  exactly  on  the  line. 
I  squinted  along  this  piece  of  fence,  without  much 
more  than  thinking  of  how  plumb  upon  the 
line  it  was,  when  there  came  suddenly  upon  me  a 
great  idea.  We  had  the  line,  in  one  place,  entirely 
within  the  Long  farm!  Why  not,  somehow,  use 
it  to  help  me  out  of  my  difficulty.^ 

I  thought  of  what  a  boundary  line  really  was. 
It  was  something  with  no  width  at  all.  Take  a 
piece  of  twine  so  fine  that  you  could  hardly  feel 
it  in  your  fingers  and  lay  it  along  and  divide  it  into 
ten  thoi'sand  strips  and  yet  each  strip  would  be 
wider  than  the  distance  between  the  two  countries. 
There  was  no  distance  at  all.  The  cows  should 
eat  the  pumpkins! 

I  didn't  go  to  the  east  field  that  day.  I  went 
back  to  the  house  and  found  David  and  told  him 
what  I  had  a  mind  to  do  and  he  told  me  to  go 
ahead.  I  hunted  up  John  Cross  and  we  went  out 
in  tne  woods  and  spent  the  rest  of  that  day  and  all 
of  the  next  in  cutting  down  some  young  oak  trees 
and  making   about   a   dozen  of  the   prettiest    and 


VARIOUS  SMALL  HAPPENINGS 


155 


Strongest  oak  fence  posts  you  would  see  in  a  day's 
journey.  We  made  them  seven  feet  long  each  and 
hewed  them  off  squarely  on  one  side  with  a  broad- 
axe,  and  there  wasn't  one  of  the  lot  that  wasn't  a 
good  eight  inches  through.  And  then  we  sunk 
post-holes  along  that  fifty  odd  feet  of  fence  I've 
spoken  of  as  being  just  on  the  line  and  put  in 
enough  of  the  posts  so  that  they  were  only  six  feet 
apart.  The  Canadian  side  of  the  posts,  the  fiat 
side,  was  precisely  on  the  line,  as  nearly  as  we 
could  figure  it,  and  we  partly  boarded  up  that  side 
with  i?ood  half  inch  pine  plank,  as  tight  as  a  drum, 
using  tenpenny  nails  for  the  work.  The  posts 
were  set  two  feet  and  a  half  in  the  ground.  I 
didn't  propose  to  have  that  fence  broken  down  oy 
cows  crowding  against  it. 

I  said  we  partly  boarded  up  the  fence.  We 
boarded  it  from  the  top  down  to  within  maybe  two 
feet  of  the  ground,  then,  on  the  Canadian  side,  we 
sunk  two-inch  planks,  end  to  end,  in  the  ground 
about  eighteen  inches  from  the  fence.  We  waited 
a  day  or  two  until  the  ground  about  the  fence  and 
the  sunken  planks  were  solid  and  then  we  boldly 
brought  down  pumpkins  from  the  Mackenzie  field 
and  filled  full  with  them  the  open  space  between 
the  planks  and  the   opening   in    the   fence.      Then 


156 


AN    ODD    SITUAITON 


we  drove  the  cows  in  our  own  field  down  there  to 
see  what  they  should  see. 

It  must  not  be  supposed  that  Jennison  was  doing 
nothing  all  this  time,  nor,  for  that  matter,  Gaherty 
either.  Gaherty  saw  what  was  going  on  as  soon 
as  we  began  work  and  posted  off  to  Jennison  to 
tell  him  all  p.bout  it.  The  Canadian  Government 
was  being  robbed  under  his  very  eyes  I  don't 
think  Jennison  was  much  impressed — though  it  was 
long  afterward  when  I  heard  of  the  visit — but  he 
kept  a  lookout  and  the  day  when  we  brought  the 
pumkins  he  was  there.      So  was  Gaherty. 

The  cows,  as  we  drove  them  up,  got  suddenly 
interested  as  they  neared  the  fence.  They  caught 
sight  of  the  yellow  ridge  lying  close  to  the  opening 
and  rushed  forward  bellowing  eagerly.  How  they 
dived  at  the  pumpkins  and  how  hard  they  tried  to 
eat  them,  but  without  any  result.  We  had  for- 
gotten something.  I  saw  that  in  a  moment,  and 
went  for  an  axe,  then  I  batted  those  pumpkins 
into  pieces  and  the  way  the  cattle  hauled  them 
through  the  opening  and  ate  them  would  have  done 
good  the  heart  of  any  man  who  doesn't  like  to  see 
a  cows  hip-bones  stick  up  like  little  lighthouses 
and  who  knows  the  difference  between  a  smooth 
and  a  rough  body. 


VARIOUS  SMALL  HAPPENINGS 


157 


David,  who  was  with  me,  had  said  only  a  good- 
day  to  the  two  officers  and  no  more.  That  had 
been  the  way  with  him  from  the  beginning.  There 
was  a  difference  in  the  way  he  spoke  to  Gaherty, 
who  had  felt  his  hand  once,  and  the  manner  in 
which  he  noticed  Jennison,  whom,  I  think,  he 
rather  liked,  but  he  didn't  talk  any.  It  fell  to  me, 
in  a  way,  to  be  the  buffer  between  the  people  and 
the  laws,  and  the  customs-men  seemed  to  feel  it. 
It  was  only  to  me  they  spoke  when  they  said  any- 
thing, and  I  was  glad  of  it.  I  knew  David.  I 
knew  that  the  man  was  trying  to  keep  cool,  and 
that  he  was  trying  to  keep  himself  within  bounds, 
that  he  was  thinking  of  Alice  and  the  two  babies 
and  that  he  had  made  up  his  mind  that  he  would 
have  some  sense,  whatever  might  happen,  no 
matter  how  much  he  might  want  to  lick  anybody, 
and  that  he  had  said  to  himself,  "I'll  leave  every- 
thing to  Jason,  and  it  will  come  out  all  right  some- 
how." I  knew  this,  though  it  may  seem  like  vanity 
to  say  it,  and  I  tried  to  conduct  myself  accordingly. 

We  stood  there  watching  the  cows  feeding,  no 
one  uttering  a  word  for  a  long  ^ime.  Then  Jenni- 
son spoke  up: 

"I  say,  old  man,  don't  you  think  you  are  break- 
ing the  law.^" 


158 


AN    ODD    SITUATION 


I  answered  what  I  thought  was  right:  "No,  sir, 
I  am  not  breaking  the  law  at  all.  The  pumpkins 
are  ours  and  we  can  put  them  where  we  please  on 
the  Canadian  side.  The  cattle  are  ours  and  we  can 
drive  them  where  we  please  on  the  American  side. 
If  they  choose  to  put  their  heads  through  the 
fence  and  eat  anything  they  find  there  we  can't 
stop  them,  can  we?  We  are  not  expected  to 
watch  our  cattle,  are  we,  to  take  care  that  they 
don't  eat  across  a  certain  line  drawn  across  country, 
a  line  that  nobody  can  see  ?  I  don't  think  any  gov- 
ernment tries  to  control  that  sort  of  thing.  It 
would  be  getting  matters  down  a  little  too  fine. 
Somebody  would  get  mad.  Several  thousand 
people—  and  they  wouldn't  be  all  of  one  country 
either — would  get  mad  .  :id  then  there  would  be 
trouble  which  wouldn't  be  ended  in  a  day.  That's 
what  I  think  in  my  homely  way,  and  that's  the 
reason  the  cows  are  eating  as  they  are  at  the 
pumpkins." 

Jennison  didn't  get  mad  a  bit,  but  he  looked 
sober.      He  spoke  calmly  enough: 

"You  understand,  Jason,  that  I  must  do  my 
duty  and  you  understand,  too,  that,  as  we  stand 
talking  here,  a  lot  of  American  cows  are  eating 
Canadian  pumpkins  and  dragging  them  across  the 
line.     That  is  clear  enough,  isn't  it?" 


VARIOUS    SMALL    HAPPliNINGS 


159 


I  was  ol)li;:fed  to  say  that  it  was. 

"Well,  tlie  individual  committing  a  crime  may 
be  an  innocent  agent  or  not,  that  doesn't  matter. 
Officers  of  the  law  have  only  one  obligation,  that  is 
to  arrest  the  perpetrator  of  a  crime  when  it  is  going 
on  before  their  eyes.  Do  you  know  of  any  reason 
why  I  shouldn't  seize  the  cows?" 

"They  are  on  American  soil,"  I  said. 

"But  do  you  know  of  any  reason  why  I  shouldn't 
seize  on  that  part  of  them  which  is  over  here  ? 
They  are  transporting  property  into  the  United 
States." 

"You'd  have  to  drag  over  the  rest  of  the  cows," 
I  said,  "in  order  to  accomplish  anything,  and  then 
yon  would  have  trouble  with  Uncle  Sam." 

"I  don't  know  about  that,"  he  said,  "it  is  the 
United  States,  or  at  least  persons  or  things  in  the 
United  States,  who  are  the  aggressors,  just  now 
you  see.  It's  almost  an  invasion.  There  is  only 
one  thing  which  relieves  the  situation  a  little  and 
makes  me  think  that,  after  all,  we  can  arrange  it 
so  that  there  won't  be  any  very  serious  trouble. 
Would  you  like  to  know  what  it  is.''" 

I  said  I  would,  of  course. 

"Well,"  said  Jennison,  grinning,  "there  isn't 
any  duty  on  pumpkins  brought  into  the  United 
States  from  Canada" 


.•■•I 


i6o 


AN    ODD    SITUATION 


I've  felt  myself  what  the  young  boys  to-day  call 
a  "chump"  a  good  many  times  in  my  life,  but  I 
don't  believe  I  ever  felt  myself  more  so  than  when 
Jennison  made  that  remark.  There  I  had  been  in 
a  fume  for  days  and  days  over  nothing  at  all.  We 
could  have  hauled  the  pumpkins  to  the  border  and 
pitched    them    over  to   the   cows    at    any    time. 

David  looked  at  me,  then  looked  at  Jennison, 
then  turned  red  in  the  face  and  then  burst  out 
laughing.  Gaherty,  who  was  standing  a  little  way 
cff,  looked  only  disappointed  and  disgusted.  Jen- 
nison kept  on  grinning  until  I  got  over  the  fence 
and  went  up  to  him.  "I  don't  think  much  of  you," 
I  said.  "My  opinion  of  you  is  that  you  can't  hit  a 
quail  or  a  squirrel  either  unless  it  is  within  ten 
feet  of  you,  but  I  don't  mind  saying  this:  that  if 
you'll  go  down  to  M-agone  the  next  time  I  have  to 
be  there  I'll  set  Upthe  ale  and  a  good  dinner." 

The  Canadian  laughed  and  said  he  would  go  with 
me  soon,  and  then  David  and  I  started  for  the 
house  together.  I  was  bothered  all  the  way  over 
the  joke  Jennison  bad  on  me  when,  there  came 
to  my  mind  the  idea  that  the  joLe  might  be 
presently  the  other  way.  There  was  no  duty  on 
raw  pumpkins  but  there  was  duty  enough  on  other 
things. 


VARIOUS    SMALL    HAPPENINGS 


l6l 


As  we  walk -d  home  David  unbosomed  himself  a 
little.  "That  was  a  great  idea  of  Jennison's,"  he 
said,  "to  let  us  go  ahead  in  that  way  and  then  to 
laugh  at  us.  I  think,  Jason,  that  when  you're  in 
Magone — and  I'll  get  ap  a  reason  for  having  you 
go  within  a  day  or  two — you  ought  to  get  up  some 
sort  of  joke  on  him  in  return." 

I  said  I  would  try,  though,  as  it  turned  out,  Jen- 
nison  didn't  go  with  me  after  all,  and  then,  as  we 
walked,  we  got  to  talking  again  as  we  hadn't  done 
for  a  long  time  over  the  reason  of  laws,  which 
seemed  contrary  to  nat'jre  and  which  didn't  seem 
to  do  anybody  on  eilher  side  any  good.  We  kept 
talking  till  we  got  to  the  house,  and  after  supper 
that  night,  we  took  up  the  subject  again  with  old 
man  Mackenzie  joining  in. 

"It  isn't  right,"  said  David,  after  we  had  put 
the  case,  but  we  didn't  have  much  of  a  debate 
because  one  of  the  twins  decided  to  have  the  colic 
and  there  was  trouble  in  the  house  and  David  had 
to  leave  us.  But  not  very  much  later  we  got  at 
the  same  matter  again.      We  couldn't  help  it. 


u 


CHAPTER  XIV. 

THE  DRIFT  OF  THINGS. 

The  old,  blue  crane  stays  late. 

Why  does  he  wait? 

As  the  ruffed  grouse  in  lowland  haunts  you  seek, 

You  note  him  ilying  slowly  up  the  creek. 

Though  in  years  past  he  has  not  lingered  so, 

Has  staid  not  till  there  came  a  hint  of  snow. 

Why  does  he  stay?     Naught  tempts  him  to  remain — 

The  creek's  banks  have  been   filled  with  autumn  rain. 

And  where,  in  August,  all  it  bed  was  dry, 

Save  where  the  deepest  of  its  hollows  lie, 

And  where  to  feed  on  prisoned  fish  in  schools, 

He  flitted  like  a  ghost  between  the  pools. 

Is  now  a  murky  stream  with  currents  svift. 

Its  surface  laden  with  the  woodland  drift. 

Past  is  the  time  of  drouth; 

Why  does  the  old  blue  crane  not  seek  the  south? 

Why  does  he  stay  when  it  is  growing  cold? 

Is  It  because  the  blue  crane  is  so  old? 

Knows  he  that  'tis  his  time  to  die, 

And  would  he  rather  that  his  bones  should  lie 

Upon  the  muddy  creek's  leaf-coated  strand 

Than  perish  in  his  flight  in  some  strange  land? 

The  mink  may  have  a  feed — his  eyes  are  keen — 

But  not  a  feast — the  old,  blue  crane  is  lean. 

—  Wii/i  Nature^ s  Creatures. 

It  had  become  full  autumn   now,  and   the  trees 

were  getting  bare,  and  there  were  rains,    and,  in- 

162 


THE    DRIFT    OF    THINGS 


163 


Stead  of  shallows  and  sand-stretches  with  open 
clam-shells  at  the  margin  here  and  there,  showing 
where  the  coons  had  emptied  them,  the  creek  was 
a  rolling  flood  and  the  roads  were  in  bad  condition. 
The  nights  were  short;  there  was  no  more  pasture 
in  the  fields,  and  the  cattle  began  to  huddle  around 
the  barns.  It  was  time  to  begin  feeding  them,  and 
it  was  then  that  I  thought  again  of  the  way  I  would 
get  even  with  Jennison. 

The  stout  board  fence  with  the  opening  through 
it  at  the  bottom  wrs  still  standing,  of  course,  in 
all  its  glory,  though  after  the  first  happening  there 
we  had  drawn  the  pumpkins  to  the  fence  and  tossed 
them  over  as  the  cows  needed  them,  and  any  other 
sort  of  fence  would  have  been  as  good,  provided  it 
was  no  higher.  Just  now,  though  I  was  glad  we 
had  sunk  the  posts.  I  went  down  there,  and, 
with  much  trouble,  we  had  nailed  them  on  so  well, 
knocked  off  the  top  boards,  all  but  one.  This  left 
a  fence  not  three  feet  high,  with  an  opening  at  the 
top  and  bell  v.  A  cow  could  come  up  to  it  and 
reach  over  al  aost  to  the  ground. 

Well,  there  was  the  stack  of  clover  hay,  and 
beside  that  a  stack  of  peas  unthreshed,  on  the 
Canadian  side,  and  we  would  have  to  give  our 
cows  something  to  eat  before  stabling  them  daily 
for  the  winter.     I  told  David,  as  I  had   about   the 


164 


AN    ODD    SITUATION 


pumpkins,  what  I  thought  was  the  best  thing  for 
us  to  do,  and  he  said,  as  he  had  done  before,  that 
I  sliould  go  ahead.  "I  think  you're  likely  to  get 
even  with  Jennison,  too,"  he  said,  laughing,  when 
I  told  him  what  I  had  in  mind. 

We  worked  on  the  Canadian  side  then.  We 
had  a  good  yoke  of  oxen  over  there  and  a  wagon, 
and  there  was  an  old  hay-rack  turned  up  alongside 
the  end  of  the  barn.  We  put  the  rack  on  the 
wagon  and  got  a  pretty  good  load  off  the  stack  of 
clover,  and  hauled  it  down  beside  the  strip  of  fence 
where  we  had  fed  the  pumpkins  to  the  cows.  We 
unhitched  the  oxen  then  and  stacked  the  load 
neatly.  Then  we  went  back  after  a  small  load  of 
the  straw  from  the  pea-stack.  This  was  for  the 
sheep.  We  had,  as  I  have  said,  only  a  small 
flock  of  them,  and,  while  they  could  feed  closer 
than  the  cattle,  it  was  getting  too  damp  for  them 
in  the  fields.  We  had  thought  of  threshing  out  the 
peas  in  the  Mackenzie  barn,  but  the  price  for  them 
wasn't  very  high  at  that  time,  and  sheep  are  very 
fond  of  peas  and  pea-straw,  and  some  of  this  feed 
we  concluded  would  be  just  the  thing  to  help  them 
out  with.  Next  day  I  drove  the  cattle  down  to  the 
fence  early,  and  pitched  off  enough  hay  to  give 
them  a  good  feed.  They  reached  over  and  at  it, 
just  as  if  they  were  feeding  at  a  manger  in  the  barn. 


THE    DRIFT    OF    THINGS 


165 


Gaherty  was  there,  of  course,  and  so  was  Jenni- 
son,  and  things  were  just  the  same  as  when  we 
first  fed  the  pumpkins,  with  the  difference  that 
Jennison  didn't  look  quite  so  pleased.  He  was 
soberer  of  look  this  time.  He  told  me  that  I  was^ 
importing  Canadian  hay  into  the  United  States; 
but  what  could  I  say!  I  told  him  in  return  that 
there  might  be  a  duty  on  hay,  but  that  we  could 
put  our  own  hay  anywhere  we  pleased  inside  the 
limits  of  the  Dominion.  If  American  cows  reached 
over  and  ate  it  the  affair  was  unfortunate,  but  what 
could  we  do? 

Jennison  only  laughed  then,  very  much  as  he 
had  done  when  I  fed  the  pumpkins,  and  said  he 
wasn't  collecting  much  duty  on  hay  just  now,  but 
that  he  did  feel  a  little  interest  in  the  pea-straw 
we  had  there.  What  were  we  going  to  do  with 
that?  I  said  it  was  for  the  sheep,  and  that  he'd 
see  how  it  was  done  later.  And,  after  the  cows 
had  fed,  we  had  the  sheep  there,  and  they  went  at 
the  straw  through  the  lower  opening  in  the  fence. 
Jennison  spoke  up  again: 

"I  suppose  you  argue  the  same  way  about  the 
peas  and  the  sheep  that  you  did  about  the  cows  and 
the  clover?" 

I  answered  that  I  couldn't  see  any  difference, 
and  then  the  man  got  in  earnest: 


1 66 


AN    ODD    SITUATION 


"There's  a  great  difference,"  he  broke  out; 
"there  are  peas  in  that  straw  yet,  and  there's  an 
export  duty  on  peas  of  ten  cents  a  bushel,  and 
your're  exporting  them." 

I  said  that  I  thought  he  was  mistaken ;  that  the 
sheep  might  be  exporting  them,  but  as  for  me,  I'd 
only  put  the  animals  close  to  the  line. 

Jennison  was  really  mad,  for  once,  but  man- 
aged to  control  himself,  and  was  almost  laughinf' 
when  he  answered  me: 

"It's  all  a  quibble,  and  you  know  it,"  he  said 
"You'replayinga  trick  to  beat  the  law,  and,  while  I 
can't  seize  anything — I  can't  break  down  a  fence 
and  take  a  sheep  from  the  American  side — I  can 
report  the  thing  to  my  government  at  Ottawa.  I 
shall  do  that." 

He  wont  away  and^Gaherty  went  with  him.  I 
noticed  that  the  two  were  talking  together  as  they 
went,  which  bothered  me  a  little,  for  I  knew  that, 
ordinarily,  Jennison  would  have  nothing  to  do  with 
the  other  man.  In  fact,  as  I  learned  afterwards, 
he  didn't  have  anything  to  do  with  him  then;  that 
is,  anything  in  particular — but  Jennison  was 
aroused,  and,  for  the  time  being,  looked  upon  us 
as  almost  the  worst  kind  of  law-breakers.  But  his  fit 
didn't  last  long  after  he  had  sent   in   his  report,  a 


THE    DRIFT   OF   THINGS 


167 


report  which,  as  he  told  me  afterwards,  he  was 
rather  ashamed  of. 

So  I  got  even  with  Jennison,  and  the  cows  and 
sheep  got  fat.  It  was  a  great  joke  about  the 
house  and,  it  led  one  night  to  a  beginning  again  of 
the  same  old  argument  between  Mackenzie  and 
David  and  me.  We  got  to  talking  about  the  tariff 
and  the  reasons  for  it.  In  the  midst  of  everything 
David  said  something  which  has  caused  me  a  great 
deal  of  thinking  since.  I  hope  I  may  live  to  see 
what  the  boy  prophesied,  and  as  he  said  it  would 
be. 

It  was  only  a  night  or  so  after  the  hay  and  pea- 
straw  happening  in  which  Jennison  got  the  worst 
of  it,  that  we  got  to  talking  over  the  matter.  Old 
man  Mackenzie  seemed  to  think  that  we  had  really 
done  something  wrong  and,  though  he  didn't  say 
so  outright,  one  could  see  that  he  felt  it.  David, 
of  course,  agreed  with  me  as  to  all  we  had  done. 
We  were,  in  a  way,  fighting  two  governments,  and 
yet  we  felt  that  we  were  right.  I've  read  of  how 
the  smugglers  who  used  to  bring  things  from  France 
into  England  thought  they  were  right,  too,  when 
they  couldn't  have  been  really  broad-minded  and 
patriotic  citizens  figuring  for  the  general  good  of 
the  country,  as  planned  by  their  men   in   of^ce,  to 


1 68 


AN   ODD    SITUATION 


have  done  as  they  did — but  the  cases  were  not 
alike.  France  doesn't  lie  alongside  of  England 
with  the  same  sort  of  people  in  each  country  and 
the  same  relations  with  the  rest  of  the  world,  and 
the  rest  of  the  world,  aside  from  these  two,  away 
off  and  on  other  continents.  So  that  the  remem- 
brance of  those  sturdy  law-breakers,  who  lived  on 
the  water  most  of  the  time  and  hid  their  spoil  in 
caves  in  Cornwall  and  all  around,  didn't  affect  me 
much. 

I  thought  of  us  all  the  while  as  a  species  of 
smugglers,  but  we  seemed  unlike  anybody  else, 
and  we  seemed  right.  To  be  right  is  the  main 
thing,  surely,  and  we  were  right  enough.  We 
were  not  in  trade  of  any  kind,  and  we  only  wanted 
to  be  left  alone  with  uur  acres  of  ground  to  raise 
things  on. 

I'm  drifting  away,  I  suppose,  from  what  I  started 
to  tell  ab'^ut.  I  wanted  to  tell  of  what  was  said 
on  this  one  night  when  the  three  of  us — one  sturdy, 
good,  Tory  Canadian,  one  average  American,  and 
the  American  hired  man  —got  talking  together 
again  on  the  tariff.  None  of  them  knew  much 
about  it,  I  mean  definitely  and  suiely,  save  as 
it  concerned  themselves. 

It  started,  this  discussion,    in   a  remark   by   old 


THE    DRIFT   OF    THINGS 


169 


man  Mackenzie  that  we  ought  to  break  no  laws, 
"even  in  a  sharp  Yankee  way,"  as  he  put  it.  I 
fired  up  a  little  at  this,  and  said  we  hadn't  been 
sharp  at  any  time  but  only  open  and  above  board. 
I  said  we  were  nothing  but  some  human  beings 
trying  to  live,  and  that  some  people  from  some- 
where were  preventing  us.  We  knew,  in  1  general 
way,  that  there  was  a  certain  line  which  must  be 
crossed  only  with  caution,  but  that  we  happened, 
as  it  were,  to  live  on  both  sides  of  that  line,  and 
that  we  had  certain  rights  of  our  own,  no  matter 
what  the  line  might  be. 

Then  Mackenzie  got  excited  a  little  and  delivered 
himself.  I'll  do  him  the  credit  to  say  that  the 
old  man  was  honest  in  all  he  thought. 

"Ye  think  ye're  doing  right,"  he  said,  "and  that 
ye're  justified  in  all  that  has  happened  or  is  likely 
to  happen.  Weel,  men,  I  don't  think  so.  The 
law  is  first;  men  wiser  than  we  made  it.  Ye 
shouldna'  have  allowed  the  coos  and  sheep  to  eat 
over  and  under  the  fence." 

David  stood  up  from  his  seat  for  a  moment.  He 
looked  at  his  father-in-law,  glared  for  a  moment, 
and  then  sat  down,  ashamed  of  himself.  I  was 
glad  of  it.  But  though  he  had  got  control  of  his 
temper,  he  was  full  of  talk.      He  did  talk,  and    he 


IVO 


AN    ODD    SITUATION 


interested  me  in  what  he  said.  It  wasn't  all  about 
Canada  and  the  UnitC(l  States.  He  broke  out 
earnestly: 

"I  wish  one  man  somewhere  would  do  at  once 
something  he  is  going  to  do  as  sure  as  the  sun 
shines — and  I  don't  know  the  man's  name  or  what 
town  he  is  living  in." 

We  didn't  know  what  to  think  of  such  a  remark. 

"What  do  you  mean.!"'  j  said, 

"I  wish  the  man  who  is  going  to  invent  a  means 
for  carrying  people  and  p'  ncrty  through  the  air 
would  hurry  up,"  David  answered.  "I  wish  he 
might  accomplish  something  definite  right  at  once, 
so  that  we  might  have  no  further  trouble  with  these 
absurd  laws  which  make  brothers  enemies,  after  a 
fashion,  whether  they  want  to  be  so  or  not.  Then 
all  would  be  different," 

This  was  so  strong  a  departure,  af  least  it  seemed 
to  be  so,  from  what  we  had  been  considering  that 
we  both  asked  David  what  he  was  really  talking 
about. 

"Why,"  he  said,  "this  annoyance  is,  it  seems 
to  me,  but  the  running  round  in  a  circle  of  the 
small  creatures.  Men  should  never  be  on  the 
terms  that  the  men  situated  in  Canada  and  the 
United    States   are.      And,    sitting    in   some    room 


THE    DRIFT    OF    THINGS 


171 


S(3mewhere,  studying  to-night,  it  may  be,  is  the 
man  who  is  going  to  stop  it  all.  It  is  a  discovery 
he  is  working  on.  Fie  has  only  one  thing  left  lo 
solve  and  I  suppose  electricity  will  help  him  out. 
He  has  but  to  devise  an  engine  with  great  driv- 
ing power  and  no  weight  to  speak  of,  and  then 
we'll  have  air  ships." 

"Air  ships!"  said  the  old  man;  "ye've  gone  daft 
boy,  but  even  had  the  world  got  airships,  what 
would  that  be  to  us  or  to  the  laws  we  must  obey." 

"What  has  it  to  do?"  broke  out  David,  "it  has 
everything  to  do!  If  ever  we  get  some  means  of 
going  through  the  air  what's  to  become  of  your 
tariff  laws?  How  are  you  going  to  enforce  them? 
Why,  I  tell  you  that  this  one  possible  invention 
would  do  more  to  change  the  world  from  a  lot  of 
wrangling  peoples  into  one  great  community  which 
would  gradually  adjust  itself  into  the  best  thing 
possible  than  any  invention  since  the  world  began! 
The  telegraph,  which  lets  nations  talk  together, 
has  done  wonders,  but  to  be  able  to  travel  through 
the  air  would  be  to  break  down  ten  thousand  walls. 
The  north  pole  or  the  very  heart  of  Africa  would 
be  the  same  so  far  as  a  free  highway  counts  and 
there  would  be  no  stopping  anybody  from  going 
anywhere.      And  how  would  you  enforce  any   cus- 


i;2 


AN    ODD    SITUATION 


toms  laws?  Who  could  prevent  th'-  floating  over 
the  line  on  a  dark  night,  or  in  the  daytime  either, 
for  that  matter,  of  anything  any  one  wanted  to 
bring?  There'd  be  no  tariff  anywhere  in  the  world 
six  weeks  after  such  an  invention,  because  it  would 
be  impossible.  I  never  thought  of  that  feature  of 
the  thing  before,  though  I've  been  deeply  inter- 
ested in  all  I've  read  in  the  newspapers  about  this 
aerial  navigation,  as  they  call  it,  but  it  never 
occurred  to  me  before  that  it  would  do  this  one 
good  thing,  that  it  would  help  us  out  of  our 
troubles.  To-night  the  idea  came  to  me  and  that's 
why  I  say  I  hope  the  fellow  who  is  going  to  make 
the  invention  will  hurry.  Just  a  little  clearing  away 
of  the  cobwebs  in  somebody's  head,  just  the  stum- 
bling upon  this  or  that  device  for  better  chaining 
the  lightning — and  they're  doing  that  now — and 
there  we  are!      Hurrah  for  him!" 

The  man  nearly  took  our  breath  away,  as  he 
did  the  first  time  we  had  ever  talked  on  this  same 
matter.  Old  man  Mackenzie  was  as  surprised  as 
I,  but  he  didn't  seem  to  take  much  stock  in  David's 
idea.  He  said  it  was  all  nonsense,  thai  fool  people 
had  been  working  on  that  invention  for  a  thousand 
years  and  were  no  nearer  it  than  ever.  And,  as 
for  its  interfering  with  the  laws,  why,  even  if  men 


THE    DRIFT   OF    THINGS 


173 


ilid  learn  to  go  as  they  were  not  intended  to  go 
and  went  through  the  air  like  ghosts,  there'd  be 
laws,  even  then,  and  people  would  have  to  regard 
them. 

David  only  laughed.  He'd  let  off  steam,  so  to 
speak,  with  all  his  talk  about  the  air  ship  and  was 
himself  again.  As  for  that  fancy  of  his  I  rather 
agreed  with  him.  Suppose  air  ships  once  really  in 
use  it  didn't  seem  to  me  possible  that  any  govern- 
ment in  the  world  could  enforce  its  tariff  laws 
after  that.  But  then,  of  course,  there  are  many 
other  great  changes  air  ships  would  make.  There 
couldn't  be  any  more  of  the  old  style  of  wars, 
because  the  fellows  up  in  the  sky  could  smash  any 
fort  or  any  war-ship  to  pieces  by  dropping  down 
dynamite,  or  doing  something  of  that  sort,  and 
there  wouldn't  be  any  unknown  peoples,  because 
we  could  examine  things  in  all  the  untraveled 
places  I've  read  of,  like  away  up  the  Amazon 
river,  or  the  center  of  Africa,  or  in  that  strange 
place  in  Asia  they  call  Thibet.  And  there'd  be 
lots  of  other  changes — but  then  the  air  ship  hasn't 
been  invented  yet.    I  mentioned  that  fact  to  David. 

We  had  a  talk  after  old  man  Mackenzie  had  gone 
to  bed  as  to  what  we  had  better  do  if  the  watch 
over  us  kept  up  and  still  annoyed  us  so,  and  David 


174. 


AN    ODD    SITUATION 


for  the  first  time  seemed  a  little  discouraged  over 
the  experiment  of  trying  to  run  a  farm  in  two 
countries.  We  were  amazingly  hampered.  There 
were  many  things  we  needed  over  from  one  side 
to  the  other  and  we  didn't  know  just  how  to  act. 
As  I've  tried  to  make  clear  we  didn't  want  to  be- 
come real  law-breakers  or  to  seem  so  and  we'd 
never  have  been  noticed  prol^ably  but  for  Vincent. 
Fmally  David  spoke  up: 

"I'll  tell  you  what  it  is,  Jason;  nothing  very 
serious  has  happened  yet,  but  we've  got  to  be 
careful.  We  never  had  to  learn  much  before  the 
farms  were  joined  and  so  we're  pretty  ignorant 
about  these  very  laws.  See  how  mistaken  we  were 
about  the  clover,  though  of  course  it  would  have 
been  different  had  we  been  moving  it  the  other 
way.  We've  got  to  post  ourselves  and  then  make 
no  mistakes.      I'll  write  for  the  things    we  want." 

So  David  wrote  to  Ottawa  and  got  a  wicked- 
looking  yellow-covered  pamphlet  which  had  the 
title  "Customs  Tariff"  on  the  outside,  and  he  got 
from  Washington  a  little  blue  book  called  the 
'■'Nev/  Pocket  Tariff,"  and  we  read  them  evenings. 
We  got  to  know  a  great  deal  we'd  never  dreamed 
of  before,  but  we  had  a  great  deal  to  learn  yet. 


CHAPTER  XV. 


INCIDENT  TO  THE  SEASON. 

Crows  are  calling,  leavci.    re  falling, 

Winds  appalling  lash  the  riv  i. 
Billow-showing  with  their  bl<  -    ^; 

Cows  arc  lowing,  all  a-sh,    • 

Clouds  unlifling,  snowfiakes  sifting, 

Kaintly  drifting.     W'c  renieniber 
Sky  as  eerie,  threatening,  dreary, 

Don't  we,  dearie?     'Tis  November! 

— Sottgs  of  the  Seasons. 

We  did  study  those    books,   that's  a    fact,   and 

carre  to  think  ourselves  very  sharp    and  knowin;^ 

in  everything  about  the  tariff.      I  got  so  stuck   up 

about  it  myself  that  I  was  almost  tempted  to    take 

a  little  risk,  and  see  if  J  couldn't  devise  a  way    to 

lead  Gaherty  into  some  blunder.      I  toid  David  of 

my  fancy  and  he"  was  inclined   to   agree    with    it, 

but  something  occurred  which  made  me  drop   that 

idea  suddenly.      I  was  thinking  one  day  of  the  affair 

of  the  clover  and  the    pea-straw,  and  thinking   of 

Gaherty,  too,  when,  all  at   once,  I  asked    myself: 

"Why  didn't  he  do  anything.'"' 

I  pondered  over  that  for  a  longtime,     We  knew 

175 


176 


AN    ODb   SITUATION 


from  rough  experience  that  there  was  a  tariff  of 
four  dollars  a  ton  on  hay  brought  in  from  Canada, 
and  we  had  learned  from  the  books  we'd  got  that 
there  was  a  duty  of  forty  cents  a  bushel  on  peas, 
and  the  gorged  cattle  often  crossed  the  line — and 
there  Gaherty  had  stood  by  without  making  any 
fuss  when  we  were  experimenting  to  see  how  far 
we  could  go  while,  all  the  time,  if  we  were  going 
againbt  the  laws  at  all,  w^  >vere  making  a  bigger 
hole  in  those  of  the  United  States  than  in  those  of 
Canada.  For  instance,  '^ii  peas  the  Canadian 
tariff  was  only  teu  cents  as  againsi  .'orty  cents  the 
other  way.  I  knew  Gaherty  and  his  disposition 
toward  us  well  enough  to  feel  that  he  hadn't  re- 
strained himself  out  of  any  I^.e,  and  it  perplexed 
me  to  account  for  his  way  in  the  matter.  I'd  been 
so  full  of  what  Jennison  might  do  at  the  time  that 
I  had  never  thought  of  the  man,  and  here  he'd 
been  holding  off  in  a  way  I  couldn't  understand. 
I  made  up  my  mind  that  he  must  have  had  some 
reason  for  it,  and  I  got  alarmed,  thinking  he  had 
laid  some  trap,  until  an  idea  came  to  me  which 
relieved  me  a  little,  and  which  long  afterward  I 
found  out  was  the  right  one.  I  decided  that  the 
whole  point  had  to  be  as  to  whether  or  not  they 
could  make  an  arrest  on  account  of  animals  feeding 


INCIDENT   TO   THE   SEASON 


177 


or  carrying  that  which  on  they  had  fed  across  the 
line,  and  that  Gaherty  had  waited  to  see  what  Jen- 
nison  decided  before  doing  anything  himself. 
When  Jennison  gave  upon  the  peas  and  pea-stra'>v, 
Gaherty  had  concluded  that  if  the  Canadian 
couldn't  do  anything,  he  couldn't,  and  that  he 
might  as  well  let  that  particular  thing  drop.  And 
this  was,  in  fact,  the  case. 

In  reality  David  and  I  had  been  worrying  for 
some  time  without  any  need  of  it.  There  is  no 
i.se  disguising  the  truth  that,  having  that  man 
Gaherty  near  us  and  watching  us  was,  in  the  bot- 
tom of  our  hearts,  a  nightmare  and  a  dread,  but, 
as  it  came  out,  the  man  was  about  at  the  end  of 
his  rope  for  the  season.  As  I  have  already  said, 
we  had  got  things  on  the  farm  pretty  well  distrib- 
uted for  our  uses.  The  stock  on  each  place  was 
about  where  we  wanted  it,  and  what  there  was  left 
to  sell  was  not  enough  on  the  Canadian  side  to 
amount  to  much. 

Gaherty  still  hung  around.  We  could  see  him 
occasionally,  just  as  we  could  see  a  crow  or  some 
other  shifting,  tricky  thing.  David  and  I  got  so 
that  we  didn't  look  for  him,  but  it  wasn't  so  with 
the  v/onmn  folk.  They  hated  the  man  so — I'm 
afraid  even  our  Alice,   with  all  her   nobleness  and 


178 


AN    ODD   SITUATION 


respect  for  the  opinion  of  David,  rather  sympa- 
thized with  the  others — that  they  kept  an  eye  on 
his  movements  all  the  time,  and  could  locate  him 
almost  any  hour  of  the  day.  Mrs.  Long,  who 
didn't  often  have  much  to  say,  couldn't  speak  of 
him  with  any  patience,  and  as  for  Lucinda  Briggs 
— well,  it  was  worth  while  to  hear  her  talk!  She 
was  in  such  earnest.  All  the  harsh  names  she 
knew  she  put  to  that  man,  and  she  was  after  me 
continually  trying  to  get  me  to  do  something  to 
get  the  fellow  into  trouble.  She  had  a  great  idea 
of  what  I  could  do,  after  all  the  thi*"  ^hat  had 
happened;  but  I  didn't  yieM.  I  migiic  have  been 
tempted  had  Gaherty  been  a  little  less  long-headed. 
But  I  was  really  afraid  of  him;  I'm  not  ashamed 
to  say  that.  We  may  have  a  sort  of  contempt  for 
a  wolf,  but  we  sleep  a  little  less  soundly,  all  the 
same,  when  we  know  he  is  lurking  about  the  clear- 
ing. Yet  we  were  really  in  no  danger  at  the  time 
Gaherty  went  away. 

He  had  considered  what  the  chances  were  of 
catching  us  in  anything  serious  during  the  winter, 
and  had  concluded  that  it  wasn't  worth  while  to 
do  bO  much  work  with  so  little  prospect  of  beating 
us  and  gratifying  the  vindictiveness  which  had 
grown  up  in  him.      Besides,   I  have  no  doubt  he 


INCIDENT    TO   THE    SEASON 


179 


felt  somewhat  shaky  about  the  way  his  superior 
officers  might  look  upon  what  he  was  doing.  Of 
course,  as  I  know  now,  they  had  got  from  his  re- 
port too  much  of  an  idea  of  what  was  going  on. 
They  had  got  the  idea  that  David  Long  was  a 
particularly  bad  man  on  the  line,  and  that,  no 
doubt,  behind  all  of  what  he  was  doing  as  a  farmer, 
he  had  some  big  smuggling  enterprise  in  hand,  and 
that  it  was  worth  while  catching  him  and  making 
an  example.  But  for  a  man  to  stay  all  winter  on 
such  business,  and  only  report  failure  all  the  time, 
wouldn't  do.  We  missed  Gaherty — or  rather  the 
women  did — and  we  heard  in  Magone,  where  we 
had  some  good  friends,  that  he  had  gone  again. 
We  heard,  too,  nearer  home,  that  Vincent  had 
said,  chuckling,  that  Gaherty  would  be  around  in 
the  spring,  and  that  the  gang  of  law-breakers 
across  the  road  would  yet  be  brought  up  with  a 
round  turn.  We  didn't  mind  that  much.  They 
say  that  a  burnt  child  dreads  the  fire,  but  we  hadn't 
been  scorched  yet,  to  any  serious  extent. 

After  we  had  become  thoroughly  satisfied  that 
we  were  rid  of  our  nightmare,  for  the  time  at  least 
we  settled  down  to  the  regular  life  we  might  have 
led  had  things  gone  all  right  after  the  joining  of 
the  farms.     It  was  getting  pretty  late    in  the    fall 


i8o 


AN    ODD    SITUATION 


now.  It  was  November,  and  what  grass  could  be 
seen  in  the  lields  was  brown,  and  where  the  crops 
had  been  the  ground  showed  black  and  unpleas- 
ant. The  skies  were  lead-colored,  and  there 
were  sharp  winds,  and  often  there  would  be  sifting  i 
flakes  of  snow  in  the  air.  Once  we  had  an  inch 
deep  of  snow,  but  it  didn't  last  long.  And  it 
came  to  be  pretty  near  Thanksgiving  Day. 

David  and  I  were  working  in  the  barn  one  day 
— building  a  :ack  lo  carry  out  for  the  sheep  to  feed 
from,  I  believe — when  he  "broke  out : 

"Jason,  we  must  have  a  big  Thanksgiving 
dinner." 

I  said  I  thought  it  was  a  good  idea. 

"We've  a  good  deal  to  be  thankful  for,"  said 
David,  "even  if  we  have  been  bothered  a  lot  by 
Vincent's  ugliness  and  scheming  and  the  man 
Gaherty  he  has  brought  upon  us.  I  never  thought 
of  it  at  the  time  the  two  farms  were  joined,  but  it 
was  a  matter  of  course  that  there  would  be  some 
trouble  if  there  happened  to  be  anybody  within 
sight  who  would  be  vicious  and  venomous  and 
smart  enough  to  lake  advantage  of  the  thing. 
Vincent,  who  doesn't  like  me,  did  that.  He  got 
a  smart  man,  too,  to  help  him.  I  don't  give  Vin- 
cent   any   credit    for   it;     it    was   all    luck.      Sut 


INCIDENT    TO   THE    SEASON 


l8l 


Gaherty  came,  just  the  same,  and  he's  a  hard  man. 
Yet  we've  wriggled  through  somehow,  so  far,  and 
seem  to  be  in  tolerably  good  shape.  I  guess  we've 
done  with  the  trouble.  It  has  robbed  me  of  a  lot 
of  time,  but  we've  learned  something.  We'll 
make  the  two  farms  pay  now,  because  we  know 
what  to  look  out  for.  We  ran  against  one  of  the 
biggest  snags  in  the  world,  and  we  got  off  cheaply, 
and  I'm  satisfied.  Now  it's  clear  sailing.  I  feel 
like  a  real  Thanksgiving  dinner." 

"So  do  I,"  said  I;  "but,  David,  I  don't  quite 
agree  with  you  about  the  outlook.  We  havn'tgot 
done  with  Gaherty  or  the  meanest  c'^  our  troubles 
yet.  I  rather  think  we  shall  have  something  serious 
on  our  hands  next  summer,  if  it  can  be  made  so. 
That  doesn't  matter,  just  now,  though  we  have 
done  pretty  we  i  under  the  circumstances.  We 
have  beaten  a  man  at  h\>  own  game,  aodhe's  gone 
away  tired.  But  4  Thanksgiving  dinner,  some- 
thsi^  you  for^t  last  fall,  is  aboaat  the  most  Amer- 
cmn  thii^  in  the  world .  WTjatt  mill  your  wife  thi  n  k 
c^  it,  aaiwlitft  will  your  fatl^rMii-Iaw  ;*ay"? 

"Alke  win  -  '  with  me  for  anything,  of  course. 
You  kaow  that  The  blessed  girl  is  the  only  real 
patriot  I  know  a.  She  hjts  become  as  much 
Amencan  as  CanaJian,  an4  is  is  moach    Canadian 


l82 


AN   ODD    SITUATION 


as  American,  and  I  like  her  for  it.  And  my 
mother  will  go  into  the  thing  knowing  just  how, 
for  we  always  had  Thanksgiving  dinners  when 
father  was  alive;  and  as  for  my  father-in-law,  I 
guess" — and  here  David  hesitated  a  little — "Well, 
1  propose,  Jason,  that  we  lay  off  for  half  an  hour 
and  go  up  and  talk  with  him.  I  want  you  along, 
for  I  believe  he  cares  more  for  your  opinion  on 
somethings  than  he  does  for  mine.      Come  along." 

"We  went  up  to  the  house  and  didn't  find  old 
Mackenzie,  but  found  him  later  on  his  own  old 
place,  sitting  on  the  fence  near  where  John  Cross 
was  fall  plowing.  He  had  been,  as  we  learned, 
having  a  debate  with  John  as  to  whether  or  not 
certain  dead-furrows  should  have  the  plow  run 
through  them  the  second  time  or  net.  He  received 
us  rather  gruffly. 

While  we  were  at  the  house  it  occurred  to  David 
to  bring  Alice  along  and  she  came  with  us  laugh- 
ing. When  we  found  her  father  the  blessed  woman 
didn't  say  anything  but  only  waited  demurely. 
She  knew  it  would  be  all  right  and  was  enjoying 
herself.  She  likeii  what  we  were  doing,  hb  I  did. 
It  made  me  f«el  kindly  toward  David,  all  this 
bu<5iness.  It  showed  me  ag^siin  wliof  deceul/iess 
and  goodness  there  was  in  him.     There   was   this 


INCIDENT    TO   THE    SEASON 


183 


old  man,  who,  legally  speaking,  though  of  course 
his  overlooking  was  always  worth  something,  had 
no  right  in  the  world  to  tell  how  anything  should 
be  done  on  either  place.  He  had  sold  one  farm  and 
had  no  claim  on  the  other,  but  he  had  advice  to 
give  all  the  time,  and  orders  some  of  the  time,  and 
David  allowed  him  to  have  pretty  nearly  his  own 
way,  which  was  by  no  means  bad.  But  it  was 
rather  nice,  I  thought,  to  make  such  a  point  of 
asking  his  opinion  about  a  Thanksgiving  dinner. 
He  was  Alice's  father,  and  men  care  a  great  deal 
for  women  —sometimes. 

David  explained  that  we'd  just  come  over  to  ask 
his  idea  about  a  little  Amej;ican  celebration  we  had 
in  mind,  and  the  old  man,  on  the  first  impulse, 
snorted. 

"Rot!"  he  said.  "Where's  the  sense  of  your 
Thanksgiving,  which  ye  observe  whether  tlie  trops 
are  good  or  bad,  or  ye'Ve  trouble  or  not.''  Ami 
ye've  had  some  this  year,  and,  happen,  ye'll  have 
some  next,  the  way  things  are  looking." 

"That's  all  right,"  said  David.  "It's  only  a 
custom,  and  I  thought  we'd  better  observe  it-  in 
fact,  we  must ;  I  want  my  boys  to  grow  up  liking 
it.  And  why  can't  you  go  in  with  us  and  have  a 
good  time"? 


1 84 


AN   ODD   SITUATION 


"Well,  we  have  a  Canadian  Thanksgiving  Day, 
too,"  said  the  old  man,  "why  don't  ye  observe  that? 
We're  nearly  even  in  the  family." 

David  said  he  hadn't  thought  of  it,  and  I  who 
had  forgotten  that  there  really  was  a  Canadian 
holiday  of  that  sort  asked  the  old  man  about  it. 
He  had  something  to  say.  He  was  a  great  reader 
in  his  way  and  could  talk  according  to  his  lights. 
He  seemed  full  of  learning  on  the  subject.  Here 
is  what  he  bi'oke  out  with: 

"I'm  not  going  to  pretend  that  we  Canadians 
were  the  originators  of  Thanksgiving  Day,  because 
I've  read  somewhere  that  the  custom  dated  back 
to  the  Harvest  Home  of  the  Celts  and  Saxons  and 
of  older  ways — is  that  what  we  call  it?  That 
was  a  little  before  our  time,  I  fancy,  and  before 
the  time  of  the  American  celebration;  ye  ought 
to  have  known  all  about  it,  David.  There's  an- 
other story,  too,  which  I  have  heard.  The 
Canadian  Thanksgiving  is  a  pretty  solid  institution, 
I  tell  you.  It  comes  in  November  also,  but  gen- 
erally a  week  or  two  earlier  than  the  American. 
The  first  or  second  Thursday  in  the  month  is  usually 
appointed  by  the  Governor-General,  who  causes 
the  proclamation  to  be  issued  throughout  the  land. 
The  first  Governor-General  started  it,  I  think,  but 


INCIDENT   TO   THE   SEASON 


185 


I'm  not  quite  sure.  Anyhow,  the  way  we  keep 
Thanksgiving  in  Canada  is  a  lesson  to  the  Ameri- 
cans. Yes,  it  is,  too!  We  don't  devote  it 
altogether  to  eating  and  drinking.  No,  we  don't. 
To  be  sure  we  have  turkey  and  roast  beef,  and 
plum  pudding,  and  it  is  a  holiday — a  real  one, 
with  all  the  shops  closed,  but  the  main  feature  of 
the  day  is  going  to  church,  and  being  thankful, 
and  giving  to  the  poor.  You  ought  to  see  the 
churches  that  day !  Even  the  Methodists  and  the 
Baptists  decorate  their  temples,  but  in  the  English 
churches  it  is  almost  as  pretty  as  it  is  at  Christmas 
time.     Isn  t  it,  Alice  .^" 

Alice  nodded.  "Yes,  father,  but  to  me  the  best 
decoration  always  seemed  the  kegs  of  butter,  and 
barrels  of  potatoes  and  flour,  and  bags  of  apples, 
and  bundles  of  clothes  they  used  to  collect  in  the 
cliurch  basements  for  distribution  among  the  poor, 
so  that  everyone  should  have  something  to  be 
thankful  for." 

"Exactly  what  I  was  driving  at,"  said  the  old 
man,  co.itentedly;  "the  beauty  of  our  Canadian 
Thanksgiving  is  that  it  isn't  selfish,  but  everyone 
'^  expected  to  give  that  day  according  as  he  has 
prospered.  After  having  done  that,  and  returned 
thanks  in  church,  he  goes  home  to  his  dinner  with 


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1 86 


AN   ODD    SITUA^TON 


a  conscience  as  good  as  his  appetite.  Sometimes 
I've  wished  we  could  have  had  the  'harvest  home' 
of  the  Old  country  instead  of  following  so  close  tc 
the  American  fashion,  but  I  guess  we  couldn't 
very  well  take  the  time  for  holidaying  any  earlier, 
and,  maybe,  our  Thanksgiving  was  just  needed  to 
set  a  good  example  to  the  Americans,  anyway." 

David  nudged  me,  and  then  asked  the  old  man 
to  explain  what  he  had  meant  by  his  reference  to 
the  other  story  he  had  heard  in  reference  to  the 
inauguration  of  the  American  festival. 

Old  Mackenzie  looked  pleased  to  get  the  chance 
of  saying  something  on  the  subject,  and  remarked 
dryly  that  he  had  been  told  that  the  New  England 
Thanksgiving  came  about  through  a  party  of  dole- 
ful folk  gathering  together  to  appoint  a  day  of  fast- 
ing and  prayer  because  of  recent  calamity.  But 
among  them  was  one  cheerful  fellow  who  waggishly 
persuaded  them  to  be  grateful  for  "all  the  things 
they  hadn't  got  that  they  didn't  want — disease  for 
instance."  And  that  so  impressed  them  that  they 
straightway  decided  upon  having  a  day  to  give 
thanks  in. 

We  all  laughed,  and  old  Mackenzie  loudest  of 
all,  and  I  said  that  I  thought  I  remembered  hear- 
ing of  an  autumnal  festival  which  used  to  be  held 
by  the  North  American  Indians. 


INCIDENT   TO   THE    SEASON 


187 


"Why!"  said  Alice,  roguishly,  "that  must  have 
been  the  original  as  well  as  the  ab-original  Thanks- 
giving of  the  western  world." 

The  old  man  had  only  one  more  protest:  "Ye 
didn't  pay  any  attention  to  the  Queen's  Birthday," 
said  he. 

David  was  tickled  and  so  was  I.  We  had  for- 
gotten all  about  that  celebration,  but  David  had 
thought  of  .t  when  it  was  too  late,  and  had  said 
that  he  was  sorry  we  had  missed  it.  He'd  wanted 
to  do  something  out  of  compliment  to  his  wife  and 
his  father-in-law.  He  was  open  enough.  He  told 
all  thi'3  to  the  old  man,  and  it  seemed  to  mollify 
him.  He  added  that  he  intended  in  future  to  ob- 
serve both  Canadian  and  American  holidays  regu- 
larly. "We  v*rork  too  steadily,  anyhow,"  he  said, 
"and,  besides,  there  are  the  twins.  If  you  think  I 
am  not  going  to  give  that  young  Canadian  a  show 
— whichever  of  the  two  he  may  be — you're 
mistaken." 

The  old  man  couldn't  stand  that;  he  "caved  in," 
as  they  say,  and  admitted  that  Thanksgiving  Day 
was  a  good  thing,  and  he'd  be  glad  to  join  in 
observing  it.  "They  were  good  people  in  their 
way,"  he  said,  "those  Puritans  of  yours.  They 
had  a  vagrant  kirk,  but  they  were  strong  men  and 


t88 


AN   ODD   SITUATION 


nonsense  was  not  akin  to  them.'*  And  so,  after 
David  had  talked  with  Alice  and  his  mother — there 
was  no  doubt  about  them — we  were  all  right. 

I  know  I  have  wasted  a  lot  of  words  on  some- 
thing that  didn't  amount  to  much — a  Thanksgiving 
dinner  is  not  a  great  thing — but  it  all  comes  to  me 
because  I  remember  that  particular  dinners©  well, 
all  that  happened  before  it  and  what  was  said 
when  it  came  orf.  I  think  it  must  have  been  some- 
thing like  a  reaction,  as  they  call  it,  from  our  worry, 
which  made  us  all  very  much  like  children  in  get- 
ting ready  for  the  affair.  David  was  bound  it 
should  be  the  greatest  dinner  the  house  had  ever 
seen,  and  all  the  rest  of  us  were  in  sympathy  with 
him.  Of  course,  the  first  thing  to  be  thought  of 
was  the  turkey. 

We  had  a  number  of  young  turkeys,  and  among 
them  was  one  which,  for  his  age,  was  a  monster. 
It  was  decided  that  he  was  the  bird  for  Thanks- 
giving Day,  and  it  was  decided,  too,  that  something 
a  little  out  of  the  common  should  be  done  with 
him.  We  wanted  a  wild  turkey,  but  they  were 
too  scarce  to  make  getting  one  certain,  and  David 
was  inclined  to  grumble  a  little:  "A  tame  turkey 
is  all  right,"  he  said,  "but  it  hasn't  got  the  gami- 
ness;  it  lacks  the  flavor  of  the  woods,  somehow," 


INCIDENT   TO  THE   SEASON 


189 


and  then,  after  thinking  a  little,  he  launched  his 
great  idea: 

"I  tell  you  what  we'll  do!  We'll  make  a  wild 
turkey  of  this  tame  one,  at  least  we'll  come  pretty 
near  it.  He  shall  taste  like  the  best  bird  in  the 
woods." 

And  he  explained  his  plan  and  acted  upon  it  at 
once.  We  built  a  rail  pen  under  one  of  the  sheds, 
and  covered  it  and  put  in  it  a  pan  of  water  and  a 
lot  of  3trav/  and  the  big,  young  turkey.  Lucinda 
Briggs  was  called  into  service  then: 

"I  want  this  turkey  to  be  eating  all  the  time 
from  now  until  the  morning  of  Thanksgiving  Day," 
said  David,  "and  I  don't  want  him  to  eat  anything 
that  a  wild  turkey  doesn't.  I  want  you  to  go  out 
in  the  woods  and  gather  all  the  beech-nuts  and 
acorns  and  hazel-nuts  yoa  can,  and  so  we'll  feed 
him.     He'll  get  a  flavor  then." 

Lucinda  Briggs  was  delighted  with  the  idea,  and 
the  way  that  turkey  fed  for  the  next  two  weeks 
was  a  caution.  He  was  gorged  on  beech-nuts  and 
other  food  all  the  time,  and,  though  he  didn't  get 
a  great  deal  of  exercise,  was  for  a  while  the  luckiest 
turkey  on  the  place.  How  sleek  he  looked;  how 
shiny  his  feathers  were; 'how  he  did  fill  out,  and 
how   proud   Lucinda    Briggs   was!     That    turkey 


1 90 


AN   ODD    SITUATION 


was  the  great  anxiety  and  pride  of  everybody  about 
the  place.  He  was  getting  bigger  every  day,  and 
we  knew  that  every  day  he  was  getting  more  and 
more  of  the  quahty  of  the  woods,  that  his  meat 
would  have  something  of  the  fragrance  and  sweet- 
ness of  the  unclaimed  regions  of  nature  and  their 
products.  We  were  very  much  engrossed  in  that 
turkey. 

And  Thanksgiving  Day  came  at  last,  and  there 
were  a  very  good  company  of  us  assembled  when 
it  came.  In  the  country  one  man  or  woman  is  as 
good  as  another,  and  John  Cross  and  his  family 
were  invited  over  and  came.  There  was  another 
one,  too — an  outsider.  "Why  not  invite  Jennison  ?" 
said  David.  "He's  a  good  fellow,  though  he  is  a 
customs  officer,  and  maybe  it  will  do  him  good  to 
help  celebrate  a  real  Yankee  holiday." 

Alice  agreed  with  David— that  was  to  be  ex- 
pected— and  Jennison  was  asked  to  come.  He 
was  with  us  when  we  gathered  together  to  destroy 
that  turkey  and  a  lot  of  other  things. 


CHAPTER  XVI. 


SERIOUS  MATTERS  DEBATED. 


And  when  the  time  of  noble  feast  had  come, 
To  fair  Queen  Guinevere  the  blameless  King 
Spake  kindly,  saying:     "Now  must  we  set  forth 
Upon  the  Table  Round  such  gallant  feast 
As  may  become  our  royal  courtesy 
And  be  fit  meat  for  brave  and  royal  knights." 
Then  beauteous  Guinevere,  with  lily  hands, 
Forthwith  did  an  immense  plum-pudding  make, 
Whispering  the  while  with  noble  Launcelot, 
Who  to  the  kitchen  wandered  after  her. 
Though  peering  Galahad  looked  solemn  things 
And  courtly  Tristram  softly  winked  an  eye. 
Arthur  himself  went  out  and  bought  the  beef, 
A  stately  roast  of  good  old  English  kind, 
And  bravely  was  set  forth  the  great  repast. 
The  knights  were  the  Round  Table  ranged  about, 
And  many  good  things  and  some  naughty  ones 
Were  there  retailed  in  quite  undertones 
By  these,  the  pride  and  flower  of  chivalry. 
While,  at  the  higher  seat,  the  blameless  King 
Was  struggling  valorously  to  carve  the  beef, 
"I  fear,  my  love,  the  beef's  a  little  tough," 
Softly  suggested  fair  Queen  Guinevere, 
To  which  the  King  responded,  then  and  there: 
"Perhaps  you  think  I  know  not  how  to  buy 

191 


192 


AN   ODD   SITUATION 


Good  beef!     The  fault  is  in  the  carving  knife, 

Wliich  is  as  dull  as  Launcelot,  his  wit; 

Your  knives  are  always  dull!"     A  silence  fell 

Upon  the  knightly  company,  aud  still 

The  blameless  King  made  struggle  with  the  beef, 

But  could  not  part  the  strong  integument. 

The  gravy  spattered  over  Guinevere 

And  on  the  doublet  of  Sir  Galahad. 

Whereat  Sir  Launcelot,  in  gibing  mood, 

Said  to  Sir  Galahad:      "There  Camelot 

Of  sop  to  Cerberus  then."     The  joke  fell  flat. 

Because  the  blameless  king  was  getting  mad; 

He  swore  a  miglity  ante-Saxon  oath, 

And  then  in  wrath  upon  the  table  leaped. 

And,  drawing  forth  the  sword  Excalibar, 

Whacked  fiercely,  as  the  object  were  a  Dane. 

But  fruitlessly;  the  tissue  would  not  yield. 

At  last,  exhausted,  with  his  face  aflame, 

The  King  commanded  that  the  beef  be  borne 

From  out  the  hall  and  pitched  unto  the  swine; 

And  the  fair  Queen,  upon  whose  face  a  smile 

Had  deepened.from  the  opening  of  the  fray, 

Carved  up  the  pudding,  and  the  wine  came  in, 

And  there  was  an  abundance,  after  all. 

And,  when  the  fullness  of  the  knights  had  come. 

It  proved,  despite  the  beef,  a  merry  feast. 

— Libels  of  The  King. 

I  wish  I  could  tell  of  things  as  some  people  can, 
as  I  have  said  before.  There's  a  sort  of  knack 
I've  often  noticed  in  books  which  makes  whatever 
is  told  interesting  whether  it  amounts  to  much  it- 


SERIOUS    MATTERS   DEBATED 


193 


self  or  not.  If  some-one  who  had  that  gift  could 
tell  about  this  dinner  of  ours,  I  believe  it  would  be 
worth  the  reading.  It  was  such  a  good  dinner  and 
we  had  such  a  good  time  over  it. 

The  women  folk  had  done  their  best.  Mrs, 
Long  had  prepared  all  the  Yankee  dishes  and  Alice 
all  the  English  ones  and,  we  had  such  a  boundless 
variety  that  we  hardly  knew  what  to  eat.  There 
were  pumpkin  pies  and  mince  pies  and  Indian 
pudding  and  all  the  vegetable  side  dishes  one  could 
think  of  from  Mrs.  Long.  And  Alice  had  a  great 
**pasty,"  as  they  called  it,  a  deep  pie  filled  up  with 
birds  David  had  shot,  mighty  good  to  eat,  and 
cheese-cakes  and,  though  it  was  a  little  early  in  the 
season,  a  great  plum  pudding.  As  for  the  turkey, 
it  was  all  we  had  hoped  for.  Never  before  was 
such  a  turkey,  at  least  never  a  tame  turkey,  which 
was  as  delicious  as  a  wild  one.  I've  read  of  how, 
in  Holland  or  somewhere,  they  fatten  geese  until 
they  have  enormous  livers,  which  are  counted  a 
great  delicacy,  but  never  was  a  fattening  experi- 
ment with  a  fowl  which  turned  out  better  than  ours. 
That  turkey  had  the  flavor  of  all  that  is  most 
delicious  and  eatable.  We  ate  and  ate  and  were 
happy,  as  people  in    the    country,  most    of  whom 

have  good  digestions,  can  be.     I  think  the  only  ex- 
it 


194 


AN    ODD    SITUATION 


ccption  was  John  Cross,  and  I  think  even  he    was 
feeling  better  than  he  had  done  for  a  long  time. 

John  Cross  hadn't  gained  any  during  the  summer. 
He'd  kept  about  as  strong  as  ever  and  as  equal  to 
his  work,  but  he'd  lost  a  little  rather  than  improved. 
His  cheeks  dropped  in  now,  and  there  were  darker 
blotches  on  the  ugly  yellow  they  had  taken  on  be- 
fore, and  his  eyes,  which  had  been  so  open  and 
square  once,  had  a  sort  of  foxy,  begging  look  about 
them.  He  had  braced  up,  though,  to  come  to  din- 
ner and  be  a  man  among  men  again,  and  was  on 
his  good  behavior  as  much  as  a  man  feeling  as  he 
did  could  be.  He  helped  his  wife  keep  an  eye  on 
the  children — how  the  healthy  little  pigs  did  eat! 
— and  tried  to  be  sociable  and  good-hearted  and 
jolly  with  the  rest.  I  got  to  watching  him  pretty 
sharply — I  couldn't  help  it,  somehow — and  I  didn't 
notice  anything  out  of  the  way  with  him  except 
when  he  looked  at  Jennison,  who  was  full  of  fun 
and  having  a  great  time  with  David  and  Alice. 
Then  there  would  come  a  strange  look  over  John 
Cross'  face  and,  I'd  almost  start  up  as  I  saw  it.  I 
made  up  my  mind  more  surely  that  the  man  had 
got  to  be  a  crank  on  the  subject  of  our  trouble 
over  the  tariff,  and  that  he  saw  something  to  be 
dreaded  and  to  hurt  in  anyone  who  had    anything 


SERIOUS  MATTERS  DEBATED 


195 


to  do  with  enforcing  the  laws.  But  my  study  of 
John  Cross  was  but  a  trifle;  the  dinner  was  the 
main  thing. 

We  got  to  talking  about  Thanksgiving  and  what 
the  celebration  meant  and,  then  old  man  Macken- 
zie came  out  strong  again  on  the  Thanksgiving 
subject.  He  said  it  was  all  nonsense.  He  said  we 
were  but  making  a  fuss  over  what  was  founded  on 
nothing  and  meant  nothing.  It  was  only  a  fancy 
of  a  lot  of  new  settlers  in  a  strange  land.  It  had 
"na  significance,"  the  old  man  said,  but  it"wasna' 
bad,"  because  the  dinner  was  good. 

I  noticed  David  looking  at  Alice  and  smiling  as 
the  old  man  delivered  himself,  and  then,  in  the 
midst  of  all  the  racket  and  nonsense,  the  dear  girl 
spoke  up  herself: 

"I  don't  think  despite  what  you  said  when  we 
asked  you  to  come,  you've  paid  much  attention  to 
this  Thanksgiving  Day.  There  was  no  reason  why 
you  should.  But  it  has  its  story,  just  as  each  one 
of  our  English  holidays  has  its  story.  It  loesn't 
go  so  far  back,  but  it  has  its  meaning  just  the 
same.  I  wish  I  could  persuade  David  to  read  you 
something  there  is  in  a  scrap-book  in  the  wing." 

The  old  man  snorted:  "What  is  in  the  scrap- 
book.?" 


196 


AN   ODD   SITUATION 


Alice  hesitated  a  little,  and,  looking  at  David, 
I  saw  him  blush.  That  settled  it.  I  knew  that 
what  Alice  wanted  to  have  read  was  something 
David  had  done,  and  when,  finally,  Lucinda  Briggs 
was  sent  out  by  Alice  for  the  scrap-book  and  David 
was  commanded  by  his  sweet  owner  to  read,  I 
knew  well  enough  that  it,  was  something  that  he 
had  written  when  he  was  in  the  high -school  at 
Magone. 

"Listen  to  what  David  is  going  to  read,"  said 
Alice,  "it  is  the  real,  true  story  of  the  first  Thanks- 
giving dinner  that  was  ever  eaten.  It  is  just  what 
happened,  as  near  as  can  be  judged  from  what 
history  tells." 

David  was  laughing,  and  his  face  was  red,  and 
the  old  scrap-book  quivered  a  little  in  his  hands. 
It  was  all  foolish,  but  I've  seen  some  very  good 
men  who  were  affected  that  way  when  they  had  got 
to  get  up  and  say  something  or  read  something. 
I've  often  thought  that  this  was,  in  a  sense,  a  test 
of  the  real  quality  and  strength  of  a  man.  The 
shallow,  conceited  fool  v/ill  read  in  public  or  make 
a  speech  readily  enough,  according  to  his  ability, 
but  the  man  of  thought  is  doubtful,  and  is  liable  to 
break  down  before  a  crowd.  And  all  this  has 
nothing  to  do  with  the  dinner. 


SERIOUS  MATTERS  DEBATED 


197 


David  rose  up,  blushi^^^  as  I  say,  ami  rcul  tlio 
little  story  in  verse.  And  this  was  the  manner 
of  it: 

In  Sixteen  Hundred  and  Twenty-one 
The  Pilgrim  Fathers  had  just  begun 

To  till  intractable  land  which  lay 
On  the  shores  of  Massachusetts  Bay, 

And  the  first  of  the  tardy  crops  they  had 
Was,  putting  it  mildly,  mighty  bad. 
In  Sixteen  Hundred  and  Twenty-two 
The  reapers  again  had  little  to  do, 
For  the  harvest  was  equally  thin  and  late 
And  a  boom  was  lacking  in  real  estate, 
And  the  Pilgrim  Fathers  were  looking  l)lue, 
For  they  couldn't  determine  just  what  to  do. 

But  mei.  t»    y  were  of  a  stubborn  grain, 
And  they  planted,  guarded  and  reaped  again, 
And  in  Sixteen  Hundred  and  Twenty-three 
The  crops  wre  what  they  had  hoped  to  see; 
And  Governor  Bradford,  thoughtful  man, 
Decided  'twould  be  a  commendable  plan 

To  celebrate  such  unusual  luck 

By  a  feast  not  wholly  of  garden-truck, 

And  a  band  of  hunters  he  ordered  out 

To  perambulate  in  the  woods  about. 

With  a  warning  'twere  to  their  lasting  shame 

If  they  didn't  return  with  a  lot  of  game. 

Hunters  they  were  of  deserved  renown  ^ 

And  the  spoil  of  the  forest  bore  them  down 


f    - 


m 


198  AN    ODD   SITUATION 

When  the  band  from  the  arduous  chase  returned, 
And  fires  of  hickory  snapped  and  burned, 

*  And  prompt  'vere  the  preparations  made 

For  a  feast.     Some  hundreds  of  plates  were  laid, 

And  the  Puritans  in  their  best  were  clad 
For  the  biggest  blow-out  they'd  ever   had. 

Old  Sachem  Massasoit  anJ  his  band 
Were  invited  to  come  and  take  a  hand 

In  the  jollification.     Of  course  they  came; 
Indians  kept  sober  then,  and  tame. 

And  all  fell  to  with  an  appetite, 
The  Red  Man  rivaling  hungry  White. 

'Twas  the  first  game  dinner  of  dignity 
Given  in  the  New  World, you  see. 

And,  from  what  Old  Colony  writers  say, 
Very  good  prog  they  had  that  day! 

Sieak  of  fattest  of  elk  was  there. 
Steak  of  venison,  steak  Cx  bear, 

Grouse  and  plovei  and  snipe  and  quail, 
Redhead,  mallard,  and  teal  and  rail, 

Roast  wild  ♦urkey,  the  king  of  birds, 
Pots  of  hominy,  toothsome  curds. 

And  mighty  pasty  and  steaming  stew — 
Every  stomach  there  got  its  due. 

But  working  jaws  made  the  only  sound; 
No  gurgling  bottle  was  passed  around; 

There  was  no  rude  jest  nor  mseemiy  song. 

For  they  wet  there  whistles  with  nothing  strong — 

But  they  att  with  vim!     How  they  tucked  away 


SERIOUS    MATTERS    DEBATED 


199 


The  waiting  victuals  that  autumn  day! 

Dyspepsia  hadn't  begun  to  be 

In  Sixteen  Hundred  and  Twenty-three. 

Though  the  colonists  suffered  abundant  ills, 
They  didn't  have  any  from  liver  pills, 

For  decidedly  harder  had  been  there  lot 

To  get  what  to  eat  than  digest  whaf  they'd  got.    . 

The  eating,  of  course,  had  an  end  at  last, 
And  then,  to  refer  to  the  grand  repast. 

The  eloquent  Governor  Bradford  rose, 
With  his  sober  face  and  his  sober  clothes. 

And  for  what  was  eaten  gave  ^arnest  thanks 
In  a  neat  little  effort  which  justly  ranks 

Among  the  best  of  things  of  its  kind — 
The  ways  of  Providence  he'd  in  mind. 

And  he  hoped  that  a  lesson  of  trust  'twould  teach — 
That  was  the  point  of  his  clever  speech 

And  such  was  our  precedent,  such  the  way 
That  the  custom  arose  of  Thanksgiving  Day ! 

David,  after  he  had  got  over  his  first  scare,  read 
pretty  well,  and  I  could  see  that  even  old  man 
Mackenzie  and  Jennison  were  a  little  interested  in 
the  story  told  in  such  a  nonsensical  way.  I  don't 
suppose  either  of  them  had  ever  heard  it  before  or 
thought  of  the  American  Thanksgiving  Day  as  any- 
thing but  some  foolish  sort  of  celebration  of  the 
Americans,  Lnd  without  any  reason  for  being  at 
all.      But  the   facts   were   pretty   nearly   right    as 


200 


AN    ODD    SITUATION 


David  gave  them  in  his  unpretending  veises,  as  I 
knew  from  what  I'd  read,  and  both  Jennison  and 
old  man  Mackenzie  seemed  to  understand  that  the 
day  meant  something,  that  it  meant  the  recogni- 
tion of  what  had  been  done  by  a  lot  of  sturdy  Eng- 
lishmen who  were  in  the  minority  at  home  and 
concluded  to  face  anything  rather  than  be  imposed 
upon  by  a  majority  in  the  control  of  consciences. 
I've  always  been  proud  myself  of  those  Puritan 
fathers  of  ours.  They  were  about  as  narrow- 
minded  and  intolerant  a  lot,  I  guess,  as  ever  lived, 
they  were  as  cruel  in  their  bigotry  as  Red  Indians, 
burning  poor  old  women  at  the  stake  because  some- 
one called  them  witches  and  enacting  laws  for 
themselves  which  were  as  oppressive  and  senseless 
as  could  be  conceived  of,  But  they  were  honest 
and  in  dead  earnest  all  the  time,  narrow  as  they 
were,  and  they  would  fight.  They  didn't  have 
much  faculty  about  some  things.  They  took  up 
a  poor  lot  of  farming  land  and  sweated  over  it, 
when  they  might  have  done  better  by  going  some- 
where else,  but  they  did  stick  to  the  job  and  did 
get  pretty  good  results  in  the  end.  They  always 
remind  me  of  that  other  lot  of  Englishmen  who 
fc  ight  with  Cromwell,  Praise-God-Barebones,  and 
t  e  rest.     The  men  with  Cromwell  were  in  such 


SERIOUS    MATTERS    DEBATED 


201 


earnest  and  such  a  bigoted  lot,  at  the  same  time! 
If  I'd  been  Hving  then  and  among  them,  I  should 
have  been  proud  of  the  way  they  went  into  things, 
though,  maybe,  I  should  have  fought,  myself,  v/ith 
the  royalists,  they  were  so  much  better  fellows. 

As  I  was  saying,  old  man  Mackenzie  and  Jenni- 
son  both  seemed  a  good  deal  interested  in  what 
David  read  and,  after  he  had  got  through,  we  fell 
to  talking  of  the  Puritans  and  their  ways.  Some 
one  said  that  baked  beans  ought  to  have  been 
counted  in  among  the  dishes  of  the  first  Thanksgiv- 
ing dinner,  but  David  explained  that  it  wasn't  likely 
that  they  had  beans  to  eat  then.  The  bean  crop 
is  not  one  of  the  first  that  comes  after  a  forest  is 
conquered  and,  besides  that,  there  is  no  evidence 
that  the  Down-east  tendency  to  beans  was  felt 
much  until  after  the  Revolution.  About  all  the 
Puritans  thought  of  was  how  to  get  enough  to  live 
on,  in  any  way,  and  they  turned,  naturally,  to  the 
Indian's  maize,  and  corn  in  all  its  forms  of  cook- 
ing was  what  pulled  them  through.  People  were 
too  apt,  David  said,  to  think  New  England  people 
and  the  Puritans  were  just  the  same,  when,  in  fact, 
a  great  many  of  the  descendants  of  the  real  Puri- 
tans were  away  out  West,  subduing  new  land  and 
occasionally  fighting  Indians,  still.     It  was  quite  a 


202 


AN   ODD   SITUATION 


learned  talk,  that  made  by  David  as  he  go  inter- 
ested. 

When  a  lot  of  people  have  eaten  very  heartily 
and  of  such  food  that  digestion  is  easy  I've  noticed 
that  they  always  get  kind  o'  reflective  and  good- 
natured  and  talk  more  real  common-sense  than 
they  are  likely  to  at  any  other  time.  They  have 
that  feeling  of  good  will  toward  everybody  which 
I  suppose  we  should  all  have  always  and  they  are 
more  likely  to  be  unprejudiced  in  all  they  think 
and  say.  It  was  so  with  us  after  that  dinner. 
Even  John  Cross,  as  he  told  me  in  a  jubilant  sort 
of  way,  which  was  all  the  sadder  because  he  seemed 
so  glad  and  because  it  showed  how  bad  his  case 
was,  felt  a  little  less  oppression  than  usual  after 
eating,  and,  as  for  the  rest,  they  were  simply  satis- 
fied and  awfully  contented.  We  all  went  out  into 
the  sitting-room — at  least  all  but  Lucinda  Briggs, 
who  stayed  to  clear  off  the  table — and  sat  down, 
and  we  men  got  out  our  pipes  and  there  was  a 
confab.     We  talked  about  most  everything. 

David  had  some  c'gars  he'd  got  in  Magone  but 
nobody  seemed  to  care  for  ^hem.  Jennison,  like 
most  Canadians,  preferred  a  pipe,  and  we  on  the 
farm  had  all  got  into  the  same  habit.  It  chanced 
that  I  fell  to  talking  about  something  with  Jennison, 


SERIOUS    MATTERS    DEBATED 


203 


I  forg3t  just  what,  when  his  pipe  gave    out.     He 
had  said  that  the   tobacco   we   were  using  was  a 
Httle  mild  for  him   and   I   happened    to   think    of 
some  cut  plug  I  had  in  a  little  can  which  stood  by 
the  clock  in  the  dining-room.     I  told  him   what   I 
had,  and  he  said  he  believed  he'd  like  some    of  it 
and   so  we   went   off  together  to  get  some  of  the 
other  brand.     We  both  filled  our  pipes  and   then, 
as  Lucinda  Briggs   had  cleared  off  the  table    and 
gone  and  we  were  all  alone  there,  we  sat  down  for 
a  moment  to  sample  the  cut-plug.     Then  we   got 
to  talking  about  things   in  general   and  it    came 
around  that  Jennison  told  me  how  he  was  situated, 
how  he  happened  into  the  business  of   a   customs 
officer  and  what  he  thought  of  it  all.   Of  course  it  in- 
terested me  greatly  for  that  which  had  anything  to 
do  with  the  tariff,  if  only  the  experience  of  a  man 
collecting  on  one  side,  bore  directly  on  the  subject 
which  affected  the  welfare  of  every  one  beneath  the 
roof  under  which  we  were  sitting.     He  told  me  of 
all  the  difficulties  of  the  place  he  held,  how,  while 
his  present  job   was    the  easiest   one   possible,  he 
might  be  sent  to-morrow  on   some   mission   which 
would  mean  only  hard  work  and  no  gain  and    that 
he  wished  he  were  in   an   occupation   which   didn't 
require  that  he  should  be  looking  out  all  the   time 


204 


AN   ODD   SITUATION 


for  some  fault  of  other  people.  "But  it's  only 
business,"  he  said,  "and  I  suppose  you,  Jason,  and 
David  and  all  the  rest  understand  it. 

I  told  him  that  I  thought  we  had  sized  him  up 
reasonably  well  and  that  if  David  hadn't  liked  him 
he  wouldn't  have  been  invited  to  our  Thanksgiving 
dinner.  Then  we  got  talking  about  the  tariff  and 
had  a  difference  of  opinion  and  were  at  it  for  more 
than  an  hour  when  David  came  in  to  see  what  had 
kept  us,  I  bear  what  we  said  in  mind  because  we 
got  so  much  in  earnest  and  because  of  what  hap- 
pened next  year,  which  was  enough  to  make  any 
man  in  the  world  remember  anything  on  the  sub- 
ject, to  his  dying  day. 


hi 


CHAPTER  XVII. 


TWO  MEN  TALKING. 


The  Jester  remarked  to  the  Great  Tycoon: 
"Ihey  do  things  better  up  there  in  the  moon. 
She's  bright, 
She's  light. 
On  the  mundane  side, 
She's  bathed  in  glory,  whate'er  betide; 
And  that's  because 
Beneficent  laws 
Confine  her  light  to  her  half  we  view!*' 
Poor  Jester!     How  little  he  knew! 
The  sun's  rays 
Have  better  ways 
And  take  their  course  on  a  b'-oader  plan 
Than  if  directed  by  jealous  man, 

— Political  Economy 

"What  do  you   think  of  it,    anyway?"     I  said. 

"What  do  you  think  of  this   system  which  makes 

Hfe  uncomfortable   for  us,  which  keeps  you   here 

and  that  man  Gaherty  here,  at  the  expense  of  the 

other  people,  and  which  doesn't   benefit    anybody 

particularly?" 

Jennison  answered  that  he  didn't  know  about 

.    205 


u 


206 


AN    ODD    SITUATION 


,  I'  ':: 


that;  he  said  there  were  two  sides  to  the  question. 
And  then  the  debate  began. 

David  sat  and  listened,  but  didn't  have  much  to 
say.  I  put  the  question  to  Jennison  fairly,  for  I 
wanted  to  have  a  good  talk  myself  on  that  same 
old  subject,  which  had  proved  of  such  importance 
to  us,  and  here  was  a  man  who  could  talk  honestly 
for  the  other  side,  a  customs  officer  at  that !  I 
wanted  Jennison  to  tell  me  if  he  thought  the  tariff 
between  Canada  and  the  United  States  was  good 
for  anything  at  all  ? 

The  man  was  puzzled  and  thoughtful.  "Well," 
he  said  at  last,  laughing,  "it's  certainly  pretty  good 
for  such  people  as  Gaherty  and  me  and  a  lot  of 
others  who  get  their  living  out  of  it,  but  about  its 
general  good  for  the  two  countries  I'm  not  so  sure. 
You  can't  afford  to  pitch  into  it,  anyhow,  if  you're 
a  good  American.  You  would  be  going  against 
your  own  statesmen." 

"How  many  of  them?"  I  blurted  out,  for  that 
irritated  me.  "What  do  we  gain  by  a  tariff,  ex- 
cept, maybe,  to  lift  a  little  the  price  of  horses  and 
cattle  and  hogs  and  poultry  and  eggs,  and  a  few 
other  things  raised  on  a  farm?  And  we  don't  buy 
enough  of  such  things  from  you — for  we  raise  them 
ourselves — to  make  a  difference  to  amount  to  any- 


TWO   MEN   TALKING 


207 


thing,  except  along  the  border.  It's  just  the  same 
the  other  way,  so  far  as  you  feel  it.  It  costs  you 
more  for  what  you  get  from  the  United  States. 
There  can  be  no  great  gain  anywhere,  for  the  two 
countries  lie  side  by  side,  and  produce  about  the 
same  crops.  We  can  hurt  each  other  a  great  deal 
more,  each  of  us,  than  we  can  help  ourselves. 
We  can  hurt  you  pretty  seriously  in  some  ways. 
We  hurt  you  by  putting  a  tariff  on  the  coal  that 
comes  in  from  Nova  Scotia,  but  we  hurt  worse  the 
manufacturers  in  New  England  who  want  the  coal. 
And  all  we  gain  is  that  coal  of  our  own  has  to  be 
carried  a  long  distance  by  railroad.  The  money 
of  the  people  is  wasted  a  little  more  on  railroad 
freights,  that  is  all.  I've  read  all  about  it,  and 
know  what  I'm  talking  about.  And  there  are 
many  other  things.  Here  is  something  that  I  cut 
out  of  a  newspaper,  a  Canadian  newspaper  at  that. 
It  seems  to  me  pretty  good  sense.  It  tells  just 
how  you  lose.  The  man  who  is  writing  just  sup- 
poses the  case  of  a  Canadian  farmer  who  takes  a 
load  of  farm  stuff  to  market  in  Woodstock  or 
Toronto,  or  London.      He  gets  these  prices: 


100  pounds  wool  at  16  cents  per  pound. .  .  .$16.00 
100  bushels  barley  at  45  cents 45.00 


208  AN    ODD   SITUATION 

20  dozen  eggs  at  12  cents 2.40 

Total  for  Canadian  load :t>63.40 

He  then  goes  out  to  purchase  necessaries   for 
which  he  pays  as  below: 
50gallons  American  coal  oil  at  20  cents..  ..$10.00 

20  gallons  sirup  at  40  cents 8.00 

200  pounds  wire  nails  at  3  cents 6.00 

800  pounds  barb-wire  fencing  at  4  cents..  . .    32.00 
10  1-2  gallons  boiled  linseed  oil  at  70 cents..      7.35 

Total $63.35 

You  see  that  the  Canadian  has  five  cents  left. 
An  American  farmer  goes  into  Buffalo  or  Detroit 
with  the  same  kind  of  a  load  as  that  sold  by  the 
Canadian.     He  gets  the  following  prices: 

100  pounds  of  wool  at  34  cents $34.00 

100  bushels  barley  at  80  cents 80.00 

20  dozen  eggs  at  16  1-2  cents 3.30 

Total  for  American  load $117.30 

He  buys,  we'll  say,  the  same  kind  of  goods  as 
the  Canadian  bought,  but  he  pays  the .  following 
prices: 

50  gallons  coal  oil  at  7  cents 3. 50 

20  gallons  good  syrup  at  2  5  cents 5.00 


m' 


TWO    MEN    TALKING 


209 


200  pounds  wire  nails  at  $1,80  per  100....  3.60 
800  pounds  barb-wire  fencing  at  2  1-2  cents  20.00 
10  1-2  gallons  boiled  linseed  oil  at  44  cents     4.62 


Total $36.72 


Doesn't  this  show  that  the  American  sold  for 
$53.90  more  than  the  Canadian  got  and  bought  for 
$20.63  less.^  Adding  this  gain  by  selling  higher 
and  his  saving  by  buying  lower,  isn't  his  load  worth 
$80.53  more  than  the  Canadian  farmer's  load 
Isn't  it  fair  to  say  that  an  American  farmer  is 
worth  from  $500  to  $1,000  a  year  more  than  the 
Canadian.!*  Of  course  the  figures  aren't  just  right. 
The  prices  of  things  vary  from  week  to  week,  but 
the  showing  is  fair  enough  on  the  average.  How 
good  a  thing  it  would  be  for  you  if  we  could  all 
work  together." 

"But,"  said  Jennison,  "even  suppose  it  would  be 
better  in  some  ways  if  there  were  no  tariff — we 
can't  go  contrary  to  England,  and  you  would  still 
have  a  tariff  against  her." 

"Yes,  of  course,  though  I  do  think  it  will  be  all 
abated  some  day.  But  England  is  a  country  away 
off,  and  in  competition  with  us.  Canada  is  just 
like  a  part  of  ourselves.     To  'discriminate, '  as  they 

14 


2IO 


AN    ODD   SITUATION 


t% 


call  it,  against  Ontario,  for  instance,  is  just  the 
same  as  for  the  rest  of  our  country  to  cut  off  Michi- 
gan and  call  that  state  an  enemy.  Yet  nc  one 
would  call  such  a  thing  wise  or  say  it  would  be 
profitable.  It's  only  the  idea  which  has  grown  up 
that  you — people  of  our  blood  and  living  with  us 
on  the  same  big  farm,  as  it  might  be  called — must 
be  got  ahead  of,  somehow.  And  you,  on  your 
side,  have  the  same  idea." 

"We  must   stand   by    England,"  said  Jennison. 

"Of  course — of  course  I  mean  in  all  real  regard 
for  the  country  most  of  us  come  from,  at  least 
most  of  our  grandfathers  and  great-grandfathers. 
But  it  seems  to  me  it's  nonsense  to  talk  about  any 
sentiment  that  interferes  with  healthful,  honest 
living.  You've  got  a  lot  of  foxy  leaders — oh,  I 
read  your  Canadian  papers! — who  talk  about 
'nationalism'  and  all  that.  They  are  doing  more 
to  keep  the  Dominion  from  being  what  it  should 
be  than  any  other  thing  that  affects  you.  They're 
making  all  your  best  young  men  come  over  and 
become  Americans,  where  they  can  do  better. 
Why,  your  population  is  not  increasing  as  fast 
as  that  of  the  land  you  came  from!  Doesn't  it 
stand  to  reason  that  if  the  two  countries  were  all 
one  in  business,  and  prosperous  just  alike,  the 
young  men  wouldn't  have  to  leave .^" 


# 


TWO   MEN    TALKING 


211 


Jennison  thought  this  might  be  so,  and  David 
was  delighted.  "Go  for  him,  Jason!"  he  said; 
"you're  getting  the  best  of  it.  You  may  not  bo  a 
very  patriotic  American,  but  you're  talking  sense, 
I    think." 

"There's  no  such  thing  as  patriotism  without 
sense — that's  what  I  believe;  and  any  other  kind 
is  foolishness  or  a  fraud.  It's  foolishness  with  the 
great  mass  of  people  on  both  sides  the  line  on  this 
Canadian  tariff  question,  and  it's  a  fraud  with  some 
of  the  political  leaders.  This  particular  tariff  is  a 
sort  of  buncombe  factory  for  them.  Any  man  of 
sense  can  see  that  it  doesn't  help  one  country  any 
to  hurt  another,  and  that,  even  if  we  may  gain  a 
little  by  hurting  someone  else,  it  isn't  a  very  decent 
thing  to  do  for  a  people  pretending  to  be  civilized 
and  Christian." 

"Where  does  your  Christianity  come  in,  then, 
Jason,"  put  in  David,  "when  you  admit  it's  right 
to  have  a  tariff  against  countries  not  on  this  con- 
tinent.?" 

This  bothered  me  a  little,  but  I  concluded  the 
only  answer  should  be  what  I  counted  the  simple 
truth:  "I  don't  know  that  it  is  just  Christian," 
1  said.  "It  isn't  Christian,  perhaps,  to  do  some- 
thing which  will  give  work  to  a  lot  of  people  here. 


IP 


212 


AN   ODD    SITUATION 


where  we  are  tolerably  prosperous,  and  throw  out 
of  work  the  same  number  of  people  in  another 
countiy,  where,  perhaps,  they  can't  stand  it  no 
well.  But  there  is  a  limit  to  how  good  we  must 
be.  If  all  the  countries  of  all  the  world  were  to 
join  together  for  free  trade  in  everything,  I  believe 
it  would  be  wise  to  go  in  for  it,  for  trade  could  soon 
adjust  itself  to  the  general  good  of  all  the  people  in 
the  world,  everywhere.  But  if  one  or  two  countries 
cf  any  importance  hold  out,  we  must  at  least 
protect  ourselves  and  look  out  for  our  own  people. 
That  won't  always  be  necessary.  And  it  isn't  at 
all  necessary  now  as  between  Canada  and  the 
United  States.  Of  course,  if  we  went  in  together 
in  the  way  I'd  like  to  see,  to  be  as  prosperous  as 
possible,  Canada  would  have  to  join  with  us  in 
what  is  done  on  -the  coast,  Its  people  would  have 
to  stand  with  us  in  those  matters  in  our  dealings 
with  the  rest  of  the  world.  That  would  only  be 
keeping  up  an  arrangement  already  made  by  nature 
which  put  the  ocean  on  each  side  of  us." 

Old  man  Mackenzie  and  John  Cross,  and  even 
Alice  and  Mrs.  Long,  had  come  in  by  this  time 
and  the  "head  of  the  family,"  as  David  called 
her,  made  us  all  go  back  into  the  sitting-rooi.., 
where  she  said  we'd  be   more  comfortable.     She 


TWO    MEN    TALKING 


213 


said,  too,  that  we  could  talk  about  the  laws  if  we 
chose,  because  both  she  and  Mrs.  Long  wanted  to 
know  more  about  them.  It  might  be  useful  even 
to  the  women  folk,  living  on  the  line  as  we  were. 
I've  a  notion  that  she  was't  very  deeply  interested, 
after  all,  but  only  wanted  the  rest  of  us  to  enjoy 
ourselves  in  any  way  we  liked,  and  we  smoKed  and 
talked  on,  and  a  great  deal  was  said  by  all  of  us. 
Jennison  wasn't  the  least  stubborn  in  the  way  he 
stood,  but  old  man  Mackenzie  there  was  no  moving. 
He  had  a  mind  of  his  own  on  most  matters,  surely, 
but  when  it  came  to  laws  already  passed  he  didn't 
think;  he  was  only  solid  as  a  rock.  Whatever  was 
done  at  Ottawa  was  right.  I  don't  think  it  made 
much  difference  to  him  who  was  running  the  gov- 
ernment at  any  time,  or  how  different  the  plan  of 
the  party  might  be  from  that  of  the  one  which  had 
gone  out.  He  was  just  solid  for  the  government. 
I  know  a  good  many  like  him  on  the  Canadian 
side.  They  would  be  just  as  solid  the  other  way 
if  they'd  happen  to  emigrate  to  this  side  of  the  line, 
and  you  can't  help  admiring  their  "sticktoitive- 
ness,"  as  David  used  to  call  it,  though  I  have  read 
somewhere  that  wise  men  sometimes  change  their 
opinions.  These  same  sturdy  Scotchmen  made 
good  fighters  once,  anyhow,  and  make  very  solid 
church  members  to-day. 


ma 


214 


AN    ODD    SITUATION 


John  Cross  did  not  say  anything  except  once, 
when  Jennison  asked  him  what  he  thought,  and 
then  he  only  answered  shortly  that  the  thing  was 
all  wrong  and  that  he  didn't  even  want  to  talk 
about  it.  He  was  worse  in  the  other  direction 
than  old  man  Mackenzie  was  in  his. 

It  was  sometime  after  we'd  gone  back  into  the 
sitting-room  that  jennison  said  that  if  we  did 
away  with  all  duties  between  the  United  States  and 
Canada  it  wouldn't  be  a  great  while  before  the 
idea  would  come  up  of  joining  the  two  countries 
closer  still,  and  that  the  proposition  would  be  for 
Canada  to  come  into  the  United  States. 

"Well  what  of  it,"  said  David,  who  couldn't 
keep  out  of  the  discussion  any  longer,  "I  don'*" 
think  it  would  come  as  you  imagine,  because  there 
wouldn't  be  nearly  so  much  left  for  either  party  to 
gain,  then,  and,  besides,  you  have  a  lot  of  dema- 
gogues who  talk  'nationalism'  while  we  have  a  lot 
who  talk  'British'  and  they  would  have  their  influ- 
ence, for  a  time.  If,  however,  some  day,  these 
two  peoples  should  find  it  to  their  interest  to  join 
under  one  gove  ;nment  why  shouldn't  they  join.^ 
That  is  what  governments  are  for,  to  secure  the 
greatest  good  of  the  greatest  number." 

"And  ye'd  have  us  in  with  all   your  robberies  of 


TWO   MEN    TALKING 


21=5 


tLe  people  and  all  your  political    scandals,"  said 
old  man  Mackenzie.     "Na,  man,  it  wouldn't    do." 

David  laughed,  "I  don't  think  I'd  say  much 
about  robbing  the  people  or  about  political 
scandals.  There  was  a  time  when  Canada  could 
boast,  but  that  is  past.  We  developed  big  rings 
fin>t,  it  is  true;  we  had  our  Credit  Mobilier,  our 
cross-continent  laMroad  steals,  and  our  scandals 
in  office,  but  Canadian  politicians  have  shown  that 
we  possessed  only  moderate  genius,  after  all. 
Take  the  Canadian  record  of  the  last  few  years,  and 
the  consequent  debt  of  the  country,  and  we'll  risk 
the  comparison." 

"You're  not  far  off,  there,"  said  Jennison, 
"though  I  don't  suppose  I  ought  to  admit  it." 
'  "But  that  doesn't  matter,"  David  went  on, 
"we're  not  a  race  to  allow  political  plundering  to 
go  more  than  about  so  far,  and  I  think,  no  matter 
what  is  said,  that  things  are  getting  better  all  the 
time  in  both  countries.  You've  punishea  some  of 
your  rogues  and  we've  punished  some  of  ours  and 
we'll  each  punish  more  of  them.  And  if,  some  day, 
it  should  become  the  sentiment  of  both  countries 
that  it  would  pay  to  join  them  I  say,  'Join' — but 
il  don't  believe  it  ought  to  come  in  any  other  way 
and    I  don't    believe  in    agitating   the  question. 


■^^HP 


216 


AN   ODD   SITUATION 


'Annexation*  talk  is  nonsense.  'Annexation'  isn't 
a  good  word  and  doesn't  express  the  idea.  'Con- 
solidation' would  be  better.  But  I  do  believe  in 
doing  away  with  this  cursed  tariff  between  the  two 
countries,  and  I  believe  so,  not  because  it  hurts  us 
here,  but  because,  taking  both  countries  together, 
it  doesn't  pay.  It  doesn't  pay  even  the  one  which 
may  get  the  best  of  it  as  compared  with  the  other!" 
And  he  got  very  much  in  earnest. 

And  so  we  talked  until  it  was  time  to  separate 
and  it  was  all  on  one  subject,  though  all  good- 
natured,  for  it  couldn't  well  be  anything  else,  after 
such  a  dinner  as  we'd  had.  I  don't  know  why  I 
should  have  told  in  such  a  diawn-out  way  about 
this  rambling  talk  on  something  the  average  plain 
farming  man  is  not  supposed  to  know  much  about, 
but  what  had  happened  before  made  it  the  main 
thing  in  our  minds,  and  I  suppose  it  is  so  with  me 
yet.     So  many  things  happened. 

It  had  been  a  good  afternoon  and  evening,  any- 
way, and  we  had  a  great  deal  to  be  thankful  for, 
after  all.  We  were  all  well,  even  if  we  had  been 
worried  a  little,  and  crops  had  been  fair  and  there 
were  the  twins. 

I  dreamed,  that  night,  that  I  was  a  turkey  and 
that  some  bigger  bird,  with  claws,  was  flying  after 


TWO   MEN    TALKING 


217 


me,  trying  to  get  part  of  my  feathers  as  duty.  It 
was  the  hearty  dinner,  of  course.  And  I  wondered, 
if  my  good  digestion  couldn't  stand  so  much  eat- 
ing, what  John  Cross  must  have  dreamed ! 


CHAPTER  XVIII. 


LIGHT  AND  SHADE  AGAIN. 


They've  sent  me  from  the  field,  the  hired  boy, 
To  bring  more  forks  and  rakes.    There  is  no  joy 
In  what  I  am,  because,  upon  the  way, 
I  see  so  many  other  things  at  play. 

The  sun  shines  hotly  on  the  country  road — 

The  hard,  white  road,  it  burns  my  shoeless  feet- 
There  is  no  water  where  the  brooklet  flowed. 
It  is  just  noon.    The  downright  shadows  meet. 
The  yellow  butterflies 

Go  criss-cross 
Above  the  road  of  white. 
In  drifting  wayward  flight. 

Criss-cross 
They  go,  the  yellow  butterflies, 
Criss-cross. 

Criss-cross 
They  go,  the  yellow  butterflies. 

There  are  too  many  of  the  things  to  count. 
To  where,  each  side,  a  strip  of  daisies  lies 
Close  to  the  path,  in  flitting  rises  mount 
The  butterflies  today; 
Criss-cross, 
Criss-cross 
The  growing  heat  is  stifling.    It  is  hot; 

218  . 


LIGHT   AND   SHADE    AGAIN  2ig 

But  heat  appears  to  please  these  flying  things, 
And  I  must  hurry  to  the  field,     I've  got 
Less  time  than  have  these  idlers,  with  their  wings. 
Criss-cross. 
The  wavering  shimmer  hurts  my  blinking  eyes, 
And  yet  the  yellow  butterflies 

Go  criss-cross 
Above  the  burning  road. 
They  have  no  load 
And  that  is  why 
They  fly 

Criss-cross, 
Criss-cross. 

—  Where  Summers  Are, 

I  wonder  what  the  best  way  is  in  which  to  tel] 
about  a  time  of  real  happiness.?  I  wish  I  knew. 
I  wish  I  could  tell  the  story  of  the  six  or  eight 
months  which  followed  that  Thanksgiving  dinner  of 
ours.  It  would  only  be  the  home  story  of  a 
tolerably  big  family  on  a  farm,  but  f  know  it  would 
be  interesting  and  healthy, 

Jennison  went  away  right  after  the  dinner,  for 
he  had  been  called  back — I  suppose  he'd  written 
some  letter  about  the  state  of  things,  and  so  they'd 
thought  there  was  no  use  in  having  him  stay  any 
longer — and  there  we  were,  with  no  one  to  look 
on  at  what  we  were  doing.  Jennison  himself  was 
a  good  fellow,  and  had  never   interfered   with  our 


220 


AN    ODD    SITUATION 


comfort  much,  because  he  had  some  common  sense 
and  a  touch  of  fellow  feeling  in  him,  but  it  was 
good  to  have  nobody  around  at  all.  As  it  had  been 
all  the  time,  we  didn't  want  to  do  anything  out  of 
the  way.  We  didn't  want  to  do  what  wasn't  law- 
ful, but  we  did  want  to  be  let  alone  in  living.  We 
were  decent  people,  and  it  seemed  to  be  our  right. 

Before  Jennison  went  away  he  dropped  over  to 
the  place  and  said  to  me,  who  happened  to  be 
doing  something  outside  the  barn,  that  he'd  come 
to  bid  us  good-bye,  and  that  he  thought  maybe  it 
would  be  worth  while  to  talk  with  me  a  minute  or 
two  first. 

"I  don't  know  much  about  it,"  he  said.  "I 
should  imagine  this  the  end  of  what  has  troubled 
you  so — I  mean  with  my  going  away — but  there's 
a  chance — mind  I  say  only  a  chance — that  there 
is  more  to  come.  I  can't  quite  estimate  what  it  is 
that  our  friend  Gaherty  and  his  associate,  Vincent, 
can  do.  I  don't  know  much  about  your  American 
ways  or  what  influence  a  couple  like  that  might 
have,  but  I  think  it  is  all  right." 

And  he  told  me  what  street  he  lived  on,  in 
Toronto,  and  said  I  must  hunt  him  up  if  ever  I 
came  there. 

We  were  just  like  other  people  now — we  were 


LIGHT   AND   SHADE    AGAIN 


221 


just  like  the  farmers  ten  miler  away  from  the  Hne 
on  either  side.  And  it  mad(  us  all  comfortable, 
though  it  didn't  really  make  much  difference  in 
what  we  did.  We  had  nothing  of  any  importance 
to  move  across  the  line  in  either  way.  We  just 
settled  down  to  doing  the  best  things  farmers  could 
do  for  the  stock  and  for  the  good  of  the  whole  two 
farms,  which  were  one. 

It  was  a  good  spring  again,  and  one  in  which  we 
tried  to  straighten  up  everything  about  the  place, 
for  we  had  got,  by  May,  into  the  habit  of  laughing 
over  what  we  called  our  old  troubles,  and  of  saying 
that  maybe  it  had  done  us  all  good  in  teaching  us 
patience  and  the  laws.  Even  old  man  Mackenzie 
mellowed  a  little  as  the  thing  got  to  be  not  much 
more  than  a  recollection,  and  was  half  inclined  to 
allow  that  there  was  a  good  deal  of  machinery 
about  governments,  and  that  they  sometimes  did 
things  just  to  make  an  example,  when  the  people 
they  so  imposed  upon  were  as  law-abiding,  so  far 
as  their  intentions  went,  as  any  in  the  community. 
As  for  John  Cross,  he  didn't  brighten  up  quite  as 
mucha3l  hoped  he  would  under  the  circumstances. 
He  was  almost  as  gloomy  and  ugly  as  he  was  that 
morning  when  I  talked  with  him  in  the  orchard 
after  the  frozen  rain,  and  as  desperate  of  mind.    He 


222 


AN    ODD    SITUATION 


was  just  as  dyspeptic  and  sallow  of  face  as  ever — 
more  so,  it  seemed  to  me — and  as  terribly  in 
earnest,  in  his  strange  way: 

"They'll  be  back  here!"  he  said,  "mind  that; 
and  there'll  be  murder  done  yet"! 

I  laughed  and  thought  no  more  of  it.  Who  could 
think  anything  of  the  sayings  of  a  dyspeptic  hired 
man  when  things  were  going  so  well!  Alice  alone 
was  enough  to  make  any  man  glad  just  to  look  at 
her.  She  got  stronger  and  almost  ruddy,  and 
handsome  in  all  ways.  I'd  never  appreciated  until 
our  troubles  were  gone  how  much  they  had  affected 
her,  on  David's  account.  I  might  have  known 
that  she  was  fretting  over  whatever  bothered  him, 
but  I  never  thought  of  it  much.  Now  I  could  Fee. 
She  became  the  brightest  and  the  most  wholesome 
and  happiest  of  women.  She  was  so  glad  all  the 
time  that  it  seemed  to  affect  everybody  else.  We 
men  folk  were  in  good  humor,  of  course — all  ex- 
cept John  Cross.  Mrs,  Long  and  Lucinda  Briggs 
were  as  happy  as  Alice  was. 

The  twins  probably  had  something  to  do  with 
the  situation,  for  they  were  a  wonderful  pair, 
surely,  and  would  do  a  great  deal  toward  making 
a  father  and  mother  happy,  but  I  guess  it  was  the 
general  swing  of  things  that  made  the  most  of  it. 


LIGHT  AND   SHADE   AGAIN 


223 


We  were  not  bothered;  we  were  healthy  and 
hearty  and  working  hard,  and  breathing  pure  air 
and  not  annoyed  by  anything  outside,  and  that  is 
what  makes  people  all  right. 

So  it  went  along  into  the  summer,  up  to  the 
time  of  about  the  twins'  first  birthday.  Now  came 
another  good  and  right  and  pleasant  thing,  for 
another  baby  was  -born  to  Alice  and  David — a  little 
girl  this  time.  There  wasn't  any  summer  thunder 
storm  when  this  youngster  came  into  the  world, 
and  it  was  all  a  matter  of  course  with  these  two 
awfully  venerable  old  married  people,  David  and 
Alice.  And  that  girl  baby  was,  if  I  am  any  judge, 
as  fine  a  baby  as  either  of  the  twins.  She  was 
just  as  sweet  a  small,  silly,  little  blinking  bit  of 
meat  ai.d  bones  and  eyes  as  you  could  find.  The 
general  conclusion  of  the  household  was  that  she 
was  about  right. 

It  was  one  of  your  yellow  summers.  I  never 
saw  so  many  butterflies  and  humming-birds  before. 
There  were  clouds,  of  course,  but  they  didn't  last, 
and  the  yellow  of  the  sun  would  slip  by  them  every 
day,  and  crawl  and  spread  and  glorify  over  every- 
thing. We  were  in  good  humor  all  the  time,  and 
ready  to  enjoy  anything  that  was  worth  it.  I  know 
that  I  found  something  worth  looking  at   one   day 


224 


AN   ODD   SITUATION 


when  I  went  up  to  the  house  about  3  o'clock  in 
the  afternoon,  after  something — I  forget  what  now. 

I  went  in  and  called  but  nobody  answered  and 
then  I  went  through  the  rooms,  because  I  was 
rather  in  a  hurry  and  was  just  like  one  of  the 
family.  I  couldn't  find  anybody.  Finally  I  got 
into  the  wing  and,  at  first,  there  didn't  seem  to  be 
anyone  there,  either,  but  I  was  mistaken.  There 
were  three  very  important  people  there  and  I'm 
glad  I  found  them  so  that  day,  for  the  picture  is  a 
good  one  to  be  remembered  by  a  man  when  he 
gets  old  and  wants  to  go  back  into  memory  and 
turn  over  the  bright  leaves.     What  I  saw  was  this: 

I  saw  three  young  ones.  Something  had  called 
out  the  women  folk  just  then  and,  for  a  few  min- 
utes, the  house  didn't  have  anyone  in  it  but  the 
babies  and  the  man  who  had  just  come  in  acci- 
dentally. It  was  something,  that,  though  I'm  not 
much  given  to  this  sentimental  memorizing  sort  of 
business,  I  shan't  forget  all  my  life.  There  was 
the  bed  with  all  its  cleanness  and  whiteness  and 
the  pillows  at  the  top.  Piled  up  close  together 
against  the  pillows  were  those  two  pirates,  the 
twins.  They'd  got  pretty  rugged,  by  this  time, 
pretty  noisy  and  adventurous  and  daring  on  their 
wobbly,  red  legs  and  were  as  taking  a  couple   of 


LIGHT   AND   SHADE   AGaIN 


225 


young  villains  as  you  can  imagine.  They  were 
sturdy  for  their  age  but  they  vvere  such  a  plunging 
pair  of  young  men  that  the  legs  of  them  and  all 
the  rest  of  their  system  generally  gave  out  a  trifle 
in  the  afternoon  and  they  wanted  a  little  sleep  to 
average  up  things.  When  I  went  into  the  wing 
these  two  were  at  the  top  of  the  bed  and  the 
blessed  little  new  thing  was  at  the  bottom  lying, 
not  with  just  her  head  on  a  pillow,  but  on  it  the 
>vhole  of  her,  still  as  a  little  flower. 

The  twins  h«d  been  put  on  the  bed  with  some 
idea  that  they  would  sleep  with  their  heads  on  the 
pillows,  as  least  so  I  judged  from  appearance,  but 
they  hadn't  stayed  where  they  were  put.  They 
had  wriggkd  and  wobbled  down  and  when  I  found 
them  they  were  lying  close  together,  very  near  the 
middle  of  the  bed. 

It  was  plain  enough  that  Alice,  before  she  had 
gone  away,  had  been  dealing  with  the  children  all 
together.  The  baby  had  gone  to  sleep  readily 
enough,  as  babies  do,  but  the  twins,  the  young 
reprobates,  hadn't  gone  to  sleep  so  easily.  And 
so  Alice  had  let  them  take  their  time  and  had  gone 
out  and  got  them  something  to  play  with.  She'd 
brought  them  from  the  garden  a  lot  of  big  red  roses. 

There    they   were,    the  two   owners  of   all  the 

16 


226 


AN    ODD    SITUATION 


world,  as  far  as  they  knew,  and  the  owners  of  a 
good  deal  of  it  in  reality  in  our  immediate  locality, 
as  all  of  us  were  willing  to  acknowledge,  and  both 
of  them  tight  asleep  and  neither  of  them  observing 
any  of  the  laws  of  ordinary  propriety.  One  of 
them  had  twisted  round  until  he  was  stretched 
across  the  other  in  a  free  and  easy  way  and  their 
fat  legs  were  all  tangled  up.  And  all  about  them 
and  held  in  their  pudgy  hands  were  the  red  roses. 
It  was  as  pretty  a  picture  as  you  can  think  of. 
They  were  so  sturdy  and  so  fat  and  so  tight  asleep 
and  mixed  up  and  so  accidentally  decked  out  by 
the  lot  of  flowers  all  about  them.  And  at  the 
other  end  of  the  bed,  on  the  pillow,  lay  the  young 
lady  who  had  come  to  add  a  queen  to  the  kingdom. 
The  two  boys  might  be  sprawled  criss-cross  like 
two  young  woodchucks,  but  not  she;  she  lay 
straight  and  still  and  all  covered  up  with  her  long 
dress,  as  a  young  person  of  her  standing  in  the 
community  should.  She  lay  on  the  pressed -in 
pillow  like  a  pearl  on  a  shell.  She  made  me  think 
of  an  old  negro  minstrel  song  I'd  heard  once: 

^'Ntlly  ivas  a  ladyy 

I  was  standing  there  looking  at  the  babies  when 
I  heard  voices  and  stepped  out  on  the  wing  veranda 


LIGHT    AND   SHADE    AGAIN 


227 


to  see  who  it  was  and  to  tell  what  it  was  I  wanted. 
I'd  made  a  mistake,  though,  and  those  who  were 
talking  were  not  out  in  the  yard  but  coming  through 
the  house  into  the  wing.  I  turned  back  to  meet 
them  and  saw  David  and  Alice  come  into  the  room 
together.  They  stopped  rather  suddenly  and 
looked  down  at  the  babies  on  the  bed.  Neither 
of  them  said  anything  but  they  turned  and  looked 
into  each  other's  eyes.  Then  she  came  up  a  little 
closer  to  him  and  he  put  his  arm  about  her  and 
they  stood  there  and  looked  down  again  together 
on  the  youngsters.  I  didn't  know  what  to  do. 
There  I  was  standing,  holding  the  door  in  my  hand 
and  looking  at  them.  I  thought  I  would  slip  away 
but  I  was  afraid  to  make  any  noise.  So  I  stood 
still.  They  looked  at  the  babies  for  a  second  or 
so  and  then  David  drew  Alice  up  close  to  him  and 
looked  into  her  face  and  smiled,  though  he  didn't 
say  anything;  then  he  let  her  off  a  little  again  and 
then  drew  her  up  close  and  kissed  hei'.  He  let  her 
go  then  and  she  stood  beside  him  and  they  both 
looked  down  once  more  at  the  babies.  He  put 
his  hand  on  her  shoulder  and  spoke  to  her: 

"My  love,  my  good  wife,  isn't  it  wonderful! 
There  are  we,  just  we!  We  loved  and  became 
one,  and  from  us  is  a  part  of  the   world  and    what 


228 


AN    ODD   SITUATION 


will  make  the  world.  Oh  my  resolute,  faithful 
Canadian  girl,  it  seems  as  if  we  couldn't  be  thank- 
ful enough,  I  suppose  our  children  are  like  other 
children,  but  it  doesn't  seem  so.  And  it's  all  you; 
it's  all  the  dear  heart  who  came  to  me  and  helped  i 
me  make  what  there  is  here,  all  this  part  of  the 
world.     You,     the    woman    of  it,    make    it    all. 

Dear, " 

"I'll  not  tell  you  all  he  said,  bocavi^^e  1  don't 
believ'e  that  would  be  right.  I  don't  believe  that 
quite  all  the  words  said  in  this  world  should  be  told 
again  by  anybody.  I  wouldn't  repeat  for  thou- 
sands what  Alice  said.  I  only  know  that  I  got 
desperate  and  let  the  door  go  and  slipped  away 
and  went  out  of  sight  of  the  wing.  I  sat  down  and 
thought  of  it.  It  was  so  good.  But  in  the  midst 
of  it  came  the  thought  of  what  I  might  have  been 
and  done  myself  and  a  great  bitterness  came  hiio 
my  mind.  There  might  have  been  some  vc;  /i 
in  the  world,  the  right  one,  too,  for  me.  It  Wt;.; 
all  because  I  hadn't  started  out  right.  I'd  drifted 
in  the  wrong,  small  way  and  had  lived  my  little 
early  life  and  done  things  which  could  not  be  easily 
undone.  I'd  thought  of  the  days  when  I  was  a 
boy  in  the  country  and  might  have  gone  in  a  bigger 
way,  somehow.      I  could  see  the  old  place    where 


LIGHT   AND    SHADE   AGAIN 


229 


I  was  born  again  and  see  myself  carrying  rakes  or 
pitchforks  down  the  bare,  hot  country  road  and 
resolving  in  my  mind  that  I  would  not  be  that  way 
always;  something  to  carry  things  and  work,  like  a 
horse  or  an  ox>  I  used  to  envy  the  butterflies  and 
the  birds  in  those  young  days.  But  I  grew  up  as 
the  other  boys  and  did  just  as  all  the  rest  of  them, 

I'd  made  my  failure  of  a  home  life  and  was  now 
only  the  hired  man  who  had  looked  on,  accident- 
ally. There  came  a  great  lump  in  my  throat  and, 
for  a  time,  I  hadn't  any  good  sense. 

Then  I  braced  up  and  thought  more  of  myself. 
I  thought  of  all  there  is  to  it,  anyway,  and  that 
there  is  a  good  deal  in  trying  to  be  helpful  even  if 
you'd  lost  the  chance  for  having  what  is  best  in 
this  odd  life  of  ours.  After  all,  the  man  who  not 
only  tries  pretty  hard  to  laugh  but  who  does  laugh 
and  who  has  a  heart  in  him  is  tolerably  good  com- 
modity, and  I  said  to  myself  that  I'd  keep  on  being 
what  I'd  tried  to  be  for  years.  That  helped  the 
lump  in  my  throat.  And  I  made  up  my  mind  I'd 
stand  by  Alice  and  David  right  along.  I  was  a 
kind  of  half  father,  half  brother  to  the  couple,  and 
they  counted  on  me.  How  could  I  do  better  than 
just  to  stay  by  them.'*  They  were  worth  it  and 
it  would  give  me  something  to  think  of  and  work 
for. 


m 


230 


AN   ODD   SITUATION 


And  this  yellow  summer  went  right  on  and  we 
had  got  at  the  end  of  the  hay  cutting  and  were  as 
comfortable  and  happy  a  lot  of  people  about  our 
house  as  you  would  find  in  seven  counties.  There 
was  every  prospect  for  good  crops  and  a  profitable 
clean-up  in  the  Fall,  and  David  told  his  father-in-law 
that  he  didn't  think  much  of  notes  and  mortgages, 
anyhow,  that  they  were  things  to  be  wiped  away 
easily  enough,  and  the  old  man  was  as  delighted  as 
was  David  over  the  state  of  things.  Then,  one 
day,  I  got  a  letter. 

The  letter  was  from  Jennison.  He  said  he  was 
coming  again.  He  said  he  didn't  know  just  why, 
but  he'd  been  ordered  to  look  after  us  again  and 
that  he  didn't  think  that  in  telling  of  it  he  was 
doing  anything  very  wrong  though  it  was  decidedly 
unofficial.  Of  course,  he  said,  there  was  only  one 
explanation,  Vincent  and  Gaherty  were  at  the 
bottom  of  it.  And,  within  a  week  after  I  got  that 
letter,  both  men  were  in  their  old  places  again, 
watching  us. 


uV, 


CHAPTER  XIX. 


THE  WATER  SNAKES. 

He  broods  over  things  that  are  all  unseen, 

But  he  knows  there  are  things  to  fear, 
And  he  stalks  about  with  a  watchful  mien, 
And  his  step  is  soft  and  his  eye  is  keen; 

There  is  Something  very  near. 

He  would  like  to  grapple  with  what  is  there 

Could  he  reach  it  with  his  hands; 
He  stretches  them  out — and  feels  the  air — 
But  thr  dread  of  Something  has  still  to  bear; 

It  will  come.     He  understands! 

— In  the  Darkness. 

Nothing  happened  at  first.  It  seems  as  if  noth- 
ing ever  did  happen  as  you  expect  when  you  are 
looking  for  it  all  the  time ;  but  that  made  none  of 
us  any  more  comfortable — we  were  brooding  and 
apprehensive,  because  we  somehow  felt  that  this 
particular  visitation  meant  business.  David 
laughed,  as  usual,  but  to  my  ear  the  laugh  didn't 
have  the  old  careless  ring,  and  even  old  Mackenzie 
began   to  grumble    a    little    at    what    he    called 

"official  interference  wi'  the  ways  o'   decent  citi- 

231 


/ 


232 


AN   ODD   SITUATION 


zens,"  Alice  was  troubled,  too — I  could  see  that 
— and  worried  over  the  manner  in  which  David 
might  be  affected. 

All  this  seems  a  great  fuss  over  a  small  matter. 
All  there  was  to  fret  over  was  the  fact  that  two 
customs  officers  were  watching  the  people  on  our 
farm  to  see  that  they  didn't  do  any  smug- 
gling, and  on3  wouldn't  think  that  anything  very 
serious.  But  I've  told  all  that  led  up  to  this  con- 
dition of  things,  and  to  this  special  visit,  and  it 
ma)'  be  understood  why  we  were  so  affected  now. 
It  broke  again  into  a  life  that  was  becoming  peace- 
ful and  settled  and  happy.  We  had  fallen  into 
such  a  feeling  of  rest  and  satisfaction  that  to  go 
back  to  the  old,  unsettled  way  was  a  shock,  even 
to  me. 

I'm  a  pretty  sturdy  and  steady  old  fellow,  and 
a  little  dull,  maybe,  but  I'm  willing  to  admit  that 
I  felt  now  almost  something  of  the  feeling  of  John 
Cross,  something  as  a  rat  may  feel  when  it  is 
thrown  into  a  glass  case  with  a  snake — I've  seen 
such  things  in  a  menagerie — and  knows  it  isn't 
going  to  have  a  fair  show.  Sometimes  it  gets  des- 
perate— instead  of  a  live  snake  with  a  dead  rat 
inside  it,  there's  a  dead  snake  with  a  live  rat  out- 
side, and  that  isn't  profitable  for  the    showman. 


THE   WATER-SNAKES 


233 


In  our  case,  though,  the  snake  was  too  big.  A 
rat  cannot  kill  a  couple  of  the  biggest  boa-con- 
strictors in  the  world. 

I  don't  know  why  I  should  think  of  snakes  or 
talk  of  them  ir  teUing  of  what  happened  at  this 
time,  save  that  Gaherty,  with  his  silent,  gliding 
ways,  always  made  me  think  of  one,  and  that  an 
incident  took  place  about  this  time  in  which  snakes 
figured,  though  only  accidentally.  I  had  nothing 
in  particular  to  do  one  afternoon,  and  I  concluded 
to  go  over  to  the  east  field  and  see  if  the  fences 
were  up  and  things  generally  as  they  should  be.  I 
had  to  cross  the  creek,  but  didn't  turn  off  to  reach 
the  place  where  we  had  a  long  plank  laid  across 
where  the  banks  were  high,  for  at  this  time  of 
year,  of  course,  the  water  was  low,  and  you  could 
jump  the  narrow  stream  at  almost  any  place  you 
chose.  There  were  little  ponds,  though,  here  and 
there  along  its  course,  which  were  wider,  and  I 
happened  to  come  up  close  beside  one  of  these. 
Looking  off  toward  the  road  just  then,  I  saw  dimly 
through  the  bushes  a  man  coming  along  whom  I 
thought  v/as  Gaherty,  and  I  concluded  to  sit  down 
beside  the  pond  out  of  sight  behind  a  clump  of 
willows  and  keep  an  eye  on  him.  As  it  happened, 
it  wasn't  Gaherty  at    all,  but  some   stranger  who 


■SI 


^ 


234 


AN   ODD    SITUATION 


chanced  to  be  going  across  the  country.  I  wasn't 
in  any  hurry,  though,  and  so  sat  still  there  on  a 
stone,  chewing  a  dry  timothy  stalk,  which  is  a  great 
habit  of  mine,  and  thinking  of  nothing  special. 

The  water  in  the  pond  was  muddy,  as  might  be 
expected  at  the  season,  and  perfectly  still  except 
as  skippers  ran  across  it  or  a  fish  came  up  to 
breathe  and  there  was  a  little  burst  of  yellow 
bu^^bles.  In  July  the  fish  in  the  creek,  the  min- 
nows and  bullheads  and  shiners  and  small  cat-fish 
and  the  young  pickerel  and  suckers,  all  gather  in 
these  pools,  and  there  wait  the  fall  floods.  A 
pretty  hard  time  they  must  have  of  it,  too,  for  the 
shitepoke,  that  small,  greenish  heron  seen  in  all 
northern  lowlands,  has  them  almost  at  his  mercy, 
and  I  think  coons  and  water-snakes  get  them 
occasionally. 

It  is  very  pleasant,  when  one  isn't  hurried,  to 
sit  idly  and  look  upon  a  creek-pond  in  summer. 
It  is  a  little  world  all  by  itself,  in  which  a  thousand 
things  are  happening.  At  night  it  must  be  a  world 
in  which  there  are  tragedies  and,  even  in  the  day- 
time, if  one  keeps  as  still  as  a  stump  or  stone  and 
makes  no  sign,  he  may  see  many  curious  things. 
I  sat  there  dreaming  and  "took  it  all  in,"  as  the 
boys  say  nowadays.     Right  across  from  me,  in  the 


THE    WATER-SNAKES 


235 


rank  grass  on  the  other  side,  rose  two  stalks  of 
Indian  tobacco  blooms,  just  like  the  cone-shaped 
hyacinths  in  the  garden,  but  with  a  color  which 
you  do  not  know  whether  to  call  a  scarlet-crimson 
or  a  crimson-scarlet,  so  deep  and  yet  so  vivid  is  its 
red.  The  blossoms  made  the  place  a  little  brighter, 
and  it  rather  needed  some  such  assistance. 

Between  the  rank  grass  and  the  water  was  a 
sloping,  muddy  space  three  or  four  feet  wide, 
showing  from  where  the  v/ater  had  receded,  and  it 
was  all  marked  and  criss-crossed  with  the  tracks  of 
such  creatures  as  make  the  creek  their  haunt. 
There  was  the  print  of  the  crane's  claws  and  the 
tracks,  which  looked  like  those  of  a  ba  )y,  made 
by  the  coon,  and  the  two  pads,  as  if  a  kitten  had 
put  two  of  its  feet  down  close  together,  of  the 
mink,  and  the  larger,  splotchy  mark  of  the  musk- 
rat.  It  could  be  seen  that  a  great  deal  of  business 
was  done  in  the  neighborhood  of  this  particular 
pond.  I  felt  sorry  for  the  clams — if  there  were 
any  left — buried  under  that  gray  ooze,  and  for  the 
fish  so  imprisoned  until  the  rains  came. 

There  was  a  droning,  for  all  the  air  was  full  of 
insects  of  the  season,  and  I  was  feeling  almost 
drowsy  despite  the  curious  things  before  me,  when 
my  eye  rested  upon  a  bunch  of  drift-wood   which 


236 


AN   ODD  SITUATION 


had  collected  at  the  pond's  lower  end.  In  the 
spring  all  manner  of  wood  is  caught  up  by  the 
freshet  as  it  spreads  over  the  flats,  and  is  sucked 
in  gradually  as  the  waters  fall  toward  the  bed  of 
the  creek.  Much  of  this  wood  is  carried  downward 
to  get  into  the  lower  streams,  to  reach  the  lake, 
maybe,  at  last,  and  finally  sink  sodden  to  its  bot- 
tom, but  some  is  caught  by  bushes  and  retained, 
and  so  along  the  lower  end  and  side  of  any  creek- 
pond,  in  midsummer,  are  collected  these  gray  plat- 
forms of  broad  chips  and  slabs  of  bark.  It  was 
upon  one  of  these  platforms  that  I  had  noticed 
something.  I  looked  more  closely,  and  saw  what 
is  to  me  the  most  repulsive  object  in  the  world. 

Once,  when  I  was  a  boy,  running  across  a  field 
one  day  with  a  rake  in  my  hand,  I  used  the  handle 
just  as  a  vaulting-pole  is  used,  and  when  I  came 
to  a  creek  I  had  to  cross,  I  plunged  the  pole  down 
and  leaped  over.  While  in  mid-air,  just  in  the 
very  act  of  flying  over  the  creek,  I  saw  where  I 
must  alight,  and  there  coiled  and  twisted  and  vile 
was  a  mass  of  water-snakes.  I  could  not  check 
myself.  I  screamed  as  I  came  down.  My  bare 
feet  crushed  upon  those  cold,  slimy  things,  and  I 
pitched  forward  beyond  them,  almost  in  a  fit.  I 
^ose  in  a  moment  and  saw  the  snakes,  which  had 


THE   WATER-SNAKES 


237 


slipped  into  the  water — all  save  one  whose  back  I 
had  broken—  and  when  I  had  recovered  my  senses 
tried  to  kill  them  all.  I  guess  I  did.  And  since 
that  time  I've  had  a  sort  of  horror  of  these  "water- 
pilots,"  as  some  folks  call  them,  the  dirtiest-look- 
ing and  the  meanest  snakes  in  North  America. 

Upon  the  drift-wood,  at  the  lower  edge  of  the 
pond  beside  which  I  was  sitting,  lay  coiled  and 
sunning  themselves  just  such  another  mass  of 
water-snakes  as  I  had  come  down  upon  so  many 
years  ago.  I  try  to  be  good  to  all  God's  creatures. 
I  remember  a  poem  I  read  once,  called  "The 
Ancient  Mariner,"  in  which  the  man  who  was  in 
trouble  was  saved  because  he  blessed  some  snakes 
which  were  following  the  belated  ship,  in  which 
he  was  all  alone  among  the  dead  men;  but,  some- 
how, I  can't  quite  bring  myself  down  to  snakes. 
They  seem  apart  from  all  the  other  things  that  live 
and  move,  and  to  be  something  dreadful.  So  I 
kill  a  snake  whenever  I  see  one.  Most  of  us  have 
an  instinct  that  way,  and  I  suppose  God  did'nt 
implant  it  in  us  for  nothing.  Besides,  the  Bible 
says  we  shall  always  "bruise  the  serpent,"  or 
something  like  that.  Anyhow  I  got  up  softly  and 
found  a  stone  weighing  about  four  pounds  and  tip- 
toed along  the  bank  until  I    was   pretty  near  the 


238 


AN   ODD   SITUATION 


spot  where  that  lot  of  water-snakes  lay  coiled  up 
on  the  drift-wood.  I  peered  over,  and  there  they 
were,  a  nasty  lump  of  them.  I  calculated  the 
thirg  nicely,  and  then,  putting  all  my  strength  into 
it,  I  let  that  stone  go  at  the  mass. 

I  was  always  a  pretty  good  hand  with  a  club  or 
stone  and  I  didn't  miss  this  time.  Thut  piecj  of 
rock  smashed  right  down  through  the  heap  of 
snakes  and  I  don't  believe  there  was  one  in  the 
lot,  so  coiled  together  were  they,  that  didn't  get  his 
back  broken  somewhere  and  was  s  done  for.  I 
watched  what  was  still  animate  an  them  heave 

and  toss  itself  into  the  water,  a  tangle  of  repulsive- 
ness,  and,  as  I  did  so,  I  heard  a  chuckle  behind 
me: 

"That's  right!     Let's  kill  all  snakes!" 

I  jumped  as  if  I'd  been  shot.  There,  standing 
close  beside  me,  was  John  Cross.  He'd  come  up 
over  the  field  so  softly  that  I  never  heard  him  and 
had  seen  me  kill  the  snakes.  He  was  chuckling 
still  as  I  wheeled  round. 

I  was  almost  in  a  passion.  "What  do  you 
mean,"  I  said,  "by  slipping  up  on  a  man  that  way 
and  scaring  him  out  of  a  year's  growth.^  It  may 
be  funny  to  you  but  it  isn't  to  the  other  fellow!" 

John  Cross  didn't  seem  much  affected  by   what 


THE    WATER-SNAKES 


239 


I  said.  "You  got  your  growth  long  ago,"  he 
answered,  "and  as  for  scaring  you,  I  didn't  think 
anything  about  it.  I  came  up  quietly,  because  it 
is  a  habit  I've  got  into  lately  not  to  make  any 
noise.  Don't  you  think  it  better  not  to  make  any 
noise.?"  he  asked  in  a  queer  sort  of  way. 

I  told  him  I  didn't  think  it  was  necessary  to 
creep  about  so  on  our  own  place  and  when  we  were 
liable  to  startle  one  another,  but  he  paid  no  atten- 
tion to  that.     And  he  was  looking  worse  than  ever. 

He  had  looked  S(  bad  before,  as  I  have  said  so 
often,  that  I  didn't  suppose  he  could  look  worse 
but  I  found  that  I  was  mistaken.  I  hadn't  noticed 
him  much  of  late,  but  of  course  this  called  my 
attention  to  him  anew.  I  don't  believe  the  man 
would  have  weighed  over  a  hundred  pounds,  he 
had  got  so  thin  and  his  face  had  got  more  and 
more  of  that  queer  color  which  there  is  no  name 
for  but  which  makes  you  think  of  something  not 
alive  nor  healthy.  His  cheek  bones  and  the  bones 
of  the  points  of  his  jaws  were  sharper  and  I  felt 
mighty  sorry  for  him.  I  knew  that  he  nmst  be 
living  a  sort  of  life  that  wasn't  really  living  and  I 
didn't  wonder  that  his  mind  was  inclined  in  a 
brooding  way.  I  asked  him  about  his  stomach, 
but  he  didn't  answer  me.     He  was  full    of  some- 


wm 


240 


AN   ODD   SITUATION 


thing  else.  "I  liked  to  see  you  kill  the  snakes. 
Let's  kill  'em,  all,"  he  said  again. 

"But  I  think  I've  killed  about  all  of  'em  already. 
That  stone  went  down  through  the  very  middle  of 
the  heap.     There  are  none  left  to  kill." 

"Oh,  yes,  there  are!  All  the  snakes  aren't  along 
the  creek.  There's  land  snakes  as  well  as  water- 
snakes  and  the  land  snakes  are  worse." 

"But  there  aren't  a  dozen  bad  ones  left  on  the 
farm.  The  mowing-machine  has  finished  most  of 
them.  I  haven't  seen  a  rattlesnake  this  year  and 
only  one  or  two  black  sny.kes,  and  the  ones  I  saw 
I  finished." 

His  eyes  were  glittering  and  he  looked  almost 
like  a  snake  himself  as  he  answered  me: 

"All  snakes  ain't  in  the  grass.  Some  snakes 
walk.     And  all  snakes  ought  to  be  killed!" 

I  told  him  I  thought  he  was  wandering  in  his 
mind,  and  tried  to  soothe  him  but  he  only  got  more 
excited.  "There  are  snakes  to  be  killed,  I  tell  you !" 
he  shouted.  "You  kill  your  snakes,  and  I'll  kill 
mine !" 

He  stared  at  me  a  minute  and  then,  mumbling 
out  something  about  work  he  had  to  do,  started 
off  walking  very  fast.  Pretty  soon  he  changed  his 
gait  to  a  run  and  went  over  the  fence  Uke  a  deer, 


THE    WATER-SNAKES 


241 


keeping  up  his  run  after  he  got  into  the  road.  I 
wondered  and  was  sorry  and  felt  thankful  that  my 
own  stomach  wasn't  out  of  kelter. 


ii 


X 


tkg.a-'ijty.aw-^tirt^i  .luhHMWwriiK; 


CHAPTER  XX. 


NEARING  A  CLIMAX 


And  blood  is  thicker  than  water,  they  say; 

Then  blood  is  a  thing  to  be  dreaded 
When  it  goes  to  the  brain  in  a  blinding  way 

And  brothers  become  dull-headed; 

When  it  stays  in  the  head  while  the  heart  is  drained 

Ar.d  thought  is  full  of  quibbles, 
And  the  link  of  brotherhood  is  strained 

And  wisdom  comes  in  dribbles! 

— Recollections  of  Morgenstein. 

Days  passed,  and  we  still  heard  nothing  and  saw 
but  little  of  either  Gaherty  or  Jennison.  Some  of 
us  caught  a  glimpse  of  Gaherty  once  in  a  while 
about  Vincent's  place,  and  Jennison,  strolling  by, 
once  or  twice  called  out  to  me  and  asked  Ik  w 
things  were  going,  but  did  not  speak  of  that  which 
he  must  have  known  was  of  most  interest  to  all 
of  us.  He  seemed  careful  of  what  he  said,  though ; 
I  suppose  it  was  only  because  he  felt  bothered 
and.  in  a  way,  embarrassed.  I  didn't  quite  un- 
derstand this  at  the  time,  but  I  did  later.      As  for 

Gaherty,  he  never   came   any   nearer   us    than    to 

242 -  .-  - , . 


NEARING     A    CLIMAX 


243 


walk  by  a  few  times,  looking  neither  to  the  right 
nor  the  left  and  speaking  to  nobody.  What  he  did 
at  night  I  don't  know.  He  may  have  suspected  us 
of  all  sorts  of  things,  and  have  been  lurking  under 
our  very  windows.  But  in  the  daytime  he  was 
not  in  sight  much.  As  I  have  said,  though,  it 
didn't  relieve  us — we  were  full  of  apprehensions, 
and  we  learned  that  we  had  reason  to  be  so  one 
day  when  Lucinda  Briggs  went  out  to  feed  the  calf. 
It  was  a  remarkably  fine  calf,  one  of  the  best 
we'd  ever  had  on  the  farm — a  Durham  cross — to 
which  Lucinda  Briggs  was  devoting  her  attention 
this  year.  The  cattle  had  been  mostly  pastured 
on  the  American  side  after  the  hay-cutting,  but 
this  calf  was  in  the  field  over  the  line,  just  oppo- 
site the  house,  the  same  one  which  the  year  before 
had  the  tomato  patch  in  the  corner,  where  the 
hens  used  to  idle  round  before  they  crossed  the 
road  to  visit  the  wonderful  nests  among  the  currant 
bushes.  The  calves  were  put  in  this  field  so  they 
could  be  fed  from  either  side,  John  Cross'  wife 
sometimes  attending  to  the  duty  when  Lucinda 
Briggs  was  too  busy,  as,  for  instance,  on  wash- 
days. There  was  a  gate  in  the  fence  just  opposite 
our  house,  and  through  this  Lucinda  would  go  with 
her  pail  of  milk  for  the  calf.  She  went  with 
hesitation,  too,  some  days. 


244 


AN    ODD    SITUATION 


Well,  it  happened  that  one  afternoon,  about  six 
o'clock,  Lucinda  went  across  the  road  with  the 
usual  pail  of  skim  milk  for  the  calf.  That  animal 
chanced  to  be  on  the  other  side  of  the  field  at  the 
time,  and  when  Lucinda  began  to  call  it  bellowed 
eagerly,  as  calves  will  when  hungry  and  with  food 
in  sight,  and,  lifting  up  its  rope  of  a  tail,  came 
charging  across  the  field  at  as  fierce  a  run  as  its 
clumsy  legs  could  accomplish.  Now  it  so  happened 
that  Lucinda  had  undergone  a  sad  experience  with 
that  same  calf  only  an  evening  or  two  before.  She 
had  not  realized  before  how  big  and  strong  it  had 
got,  and  when  it  had  chanced  to  come  so  with  a 
rush,  had  waited  it  fearlessly.  It  had  dived  at 
the  pail  of  milk  as  it  came  up,  and  over  had  gone 
Lucinda,  pail  and  all.  She  came  back  to  the 
house  for  more  milk,  wet  as  could  be  and  all 
tousled  and  dusty,  and  pretty  well  shaken  up.  She 
had  learned  to  respect  that  calf. 

On  the  evening  I  now  tell  of,  as  the  calf  came 
tearing  at  her,  Lucinda  weakened.  She  waited 
until  it  got  pretty  near  and  then  screamed  and  ran 
back  through  the  gate  and  across  the  road  toward 
our  house  again.  She  did  not  start  quite  soon 
enough.  She  should  have  fled  earlier,  or  else  had 
sense  enough  to  close  the  gate  behind  her  as  she 


NEARING   A    CLIMAX 


245 


ran.  The  calf  rushed  through  and  caught  her  just 
as  she  neared  the  gate  on  the  American  side.  It 
dived  at  the  pail  and  Lucinda  went  down  just  as 
she  had  done  before.  She  rose  up,  yelling,  of 
course,  as  she  always  did  in  an  emergency,  and 
then  she  saw  something  which  quieted  her  all  at 
once. 

What  she  saw  was  only  Gaherty  on  the  opposite 
side  of  the  street,  closing  the  gate  through  whioh 
she  and  the  calf  had  just  come.  Lucinda  stood 
stock  still,  her  eyes  and  mouth  wide  open,  watch- 
ing the  man  much  as  they  say  a  bird  watches  a 
rattlesnake,  for,  to  her  mind,  Gaherty  was  some- 
thing awful— something  which  was  an  enemy,  but 
powerful  and  wonderfully  interesting,  so  interest- 
ing that  she  almost  forgot  to  be  afraid  in  watching. 
The  man  did  not  notice  her  at  all.  He  closed  the 
gate  tightly,  even  putting  the  wooden  pin  through 
the  rough  staple  so  that  the  thing  couldn't  open 
again  until  someone  did  it  carefully,  and  then  he 
went  a  little  to  the  east  and  picked  up  a  short 
stick  he  found  there  and  came  up  and  hit  the  calf, 
which  was  still  rooting  around  eagerly  where  the 
pail  of  milk  had  been  spilled,  and  so  drove  it  off 
galloping  to  the  west.  As  it  plunged  away  west- 
ward he  ran  around  and  headed  it  off  to  the  south, 


246 


AN   ODD    SITUATION 


and  it  blundered  along  until  it  got  opposite  Vin- 
cent's place.  Lucinda  followed,  still  all  dazed, 
until  she  had  turned  the  corner  and  could  see  what 
happened. 

The  calf  would  only  run  a  little  way  ahead  and 
then  wait  until  Gaherty  came  up  and  drove  it  on. 
When  it  stopped  opposite  Vincent's  house  the  man 
did  not  attempt  to  drive  it  any  further  but  kept  it 
from  coming  back  toward  our  place,  while  he 
called  for  Vincent.  That  sneaking  brute  came  out 
at  last  and  opened  the  gate  to  his  barnyard  and 
then  the  two  of  them  drove  the  calf  in  and  finally 
drove  it  even  into  the  cow  stable  and  closed  the 
doors.  Then,  when  she  had  seen  that,  Lucinda 
Briggs  started  home  on  a  run. 

Feeding  the  calf  was  one  of  the  things  Lucinda 
did  just  before  supper,  so  that  we  were  11  gathered 
in  the  house  when  she  burst  in  upon  us.  She  was 
white  in  the  face  and,  at  first,  couldn't  talk  very 
well.  She  only  gasped.  We  knew  something 
serious  to  her  had  happened  but  we  were  so  used 
to  her  ways  that  we  didn't  know  whether  the  barn 
was  afire  or  whether  she'd  found  that  a  hawk  had 
killed  a  hen.      So  we  only  laughed. 

Lucinda  found  her  voice,  though,  finally  and 
managed  to  tell  her  story,  and  we  were  all   sober 


NEARING   A   CLIMAX 


247 


then.  We  knew  that  trouble  had  begun  again, 
though  in  a  way  that  was  almost  ridiculous.  We 
knew  that  a  calf  brought  across  the  line  accident- 
ally had  been  seized  for  violation  of  the  revenue 
laws.  Gaherty  had  happened  along,  and  seeing  his 
opportunity,  with  only  a  woman  to  oppose  him, 
had  improved  it  in  his  cowardly  way.  Was  he 
right,  or  had  he  made  some  such  mistake  as  he  did 
the  night  he  caught  Lucinda  with  the  eggs.?  That 
was  what  bothered  us.  We  got  out  the  books,  the 
American  blue  bound  one  and  the  Canadian  pam- 
phlet with  the  yellow  cover,  and  sat  down  to  study 
the  thing  out. 

"I  believe  he's  got  us,"  David  said,  finally,  "not 
rightly,  of  course,  but  in  a  tricky  way.  The  law 
says  that  you  can't  bring  cattle  across  from 
Canada  unless  you  pay  $10  00  on  grown  cattle 
and  $2.00  a  head  on  any  under  a  year  old.  Why 
didn't  you  tie  $2.00  to  the  calf,  Lucinda,  so  that 
it  could  pay  for  its  passage  whenever  you  ran 
away  from  it.?"' 

Lucinda  Briggs,  not  understanding  the  joke, 
didn't  make  any  answer,  only  staring  at  David  and 
looking  troubled.  He  pacified  her,  saying  that  she 
had  done  nothing  wrong,  and  then  we  considered 
the  books  again.  We  couldn't  find  anything  to 
comfort  us. 


iit 


m 


248 


AN   ODD   SITUATION 


Lucinda  had  brought  the  calf  across  the  line,  and 
though  it  was  all  an  accident  and  a  ridiculous  one, 
we  knew  that  Gaherty  had  a  case  on  us.  We 
knew  that,  from  what  he  and  Vincent  must  have 
reported,  we  should  stand  at  headquarter!  as  a 
hard  lot,  and  that  the  bringing  over  of  the  calf 
would  only  be  counted  as  a  sharp  trick  of  ours, 
and  that  we'd  lose  it  unless  we  paid  the  $2.00,  and 
might  lose  it  anyhow.  We'd  got  rather  fond  of 
that  calf.  It  was  a  fine  cross  and  was  intended  to 
match  another  calf  David  had  found  on  the  Ameri- 
can side  and  had  bought  to  be  delivered  as  soon  as 
it  had  done  with  milk.  He  had  a  neatly  matched 
pair  of  big  oxen  in  mind.  At  last  David  came  to 
a  decision: 

"It  grits  me,  Jason,"  he  said,  *but  I  don't  think 
there's  any  other  way  but  to  pay  the  $2.00  if  we 
want  the  calf  back  again.  I'm  afraid,  the  way  I 
feel  now,  that  I  shouldn't  be  very  patient,  or  very 
wise,  talking  to  Gaherty.  Will  you  attend  to  it 
all.?  Will  you  see  the  fellow  in  the  morning  and 
take  over  the  $2  00  and  bring  the  calf  back.!* 

I  said  I'd  go  over,  but,  in  my  own  mind,  I 
thought  I  shouldn't  be  any  better  than  David.  I 
was  getting  pretty  mad  myself.  Besides,  I  wasn't 
by  any  means  sure  that  $2.00  wpuld  get  the  calf. 


NEARING   A   CLIMAX 


249 


I  thought  over  the  matter  a  good  deal  as  I  lay 
in  bed  that  night  and  I  couldn't  see  my  way  clear 
at  all.  So  far  as  the  calf  was  concerned,  I  felt 
that  it  didn't  cut  much  of  a  figure,  though  I'll  own 
up  that  I  was  bothered  over  the  prospect  of  losing 
the  young  brute.  A  prettier  match  I'd  never  seen 
than  that  calf  would  make  with  the  one  David  had 
arranged  to  buy,  and  people  in  the  country  get  a 
great  deal  of  satisfaction  out  of  a  well-matched 
pair  of  oxen.  I  don't  know  that  they  are  any 
better  for  being  alike  in  markings,  that  they  work 
together  any  more  fairly  or  are  better  in  any  way, 
but  it  is  a  country  fancy  which  has  weight  and  a 
matched  yoke  brings  more  money  than  another. 
So  I  was  troubled,  but  I  consoled  myself  with  the 
reflection  that  though  the  calves  were  almost  just 
alike  now,  they  might  grow  up  different  from  each 
other.  One  might  get  stunted  and  the  other  big, 
or  one  might  keep  all  his  spots  and  color  and  the 
other  lose  them.  It  often  happens  that  way  with 
growing  cattle.  This  idea  made  me  a  little  more 
contented,  as  far  as  the  calf  was  concerned.  It 
didn't  help  me  about  the  general  situation.  I 
knew  that  the  bother  over  the  calf  meant  but  the 
beginning  of  trouble  that  was  bound  to  be  serious 
in  the  end.     It  was  all  very  well  to  laugh   and  to 


■IHH 


250 


AN    ODD   SITUATION 


count  this  but  an  affair  of  a  calf,  but  that  was  not 
all  it  meant.  Still,  I  made  up  my  mind  I  would 
do  my  best  in  the  morning. 

I  dreamed  about  Gaherty  and  calves  that  night 
and  woke  in  an  uncomfortable  condition.  The 
sun  was  streaming  in  at  my  window,  though,  and, 
somehow,  that  always  helj)s  a  fellow,  and  by  the 
time  I'd  doused  myself  with  cold  water  and  had  a 
good  breakfast,  I  felt  reasonably  well  fixed  for 
meeting  Gaherty  and  learning,  if  I  could,  how 
things  were.  I  didn't  like  to  go  to  Vincent's 
place,  but  there  was  no  way  out  of  it.  So  I  went 
there. 

I  banged  away  at  the  front  door  and  Mrs.  Vin- 
cent, a  pale,  harmless  sort   of   woman,  let   me   in. 

I  said  I  wanted  to  see  Mr.  Gaherty  and  presently 
he  came.  Some  of  his  sneaking  look  was  gone  for 
a  time.  I've  noticed  that  it  always  goes  from 
mean  men  when  they  feel  that  they  have  the  ad- 
vantage for  the  moment.  They  look  more  like 
real  men  then,  though  it  doesn't  come  from  the 
proper  consciousness  of  what  makes  a  man  and 
makes  him  respect  himself,  no  matter  how  things 
may  be  going. 

The  man  nodded  to  me  and  sat  down  in  a  chair. 
I  wasn't  asked  to  do  the   same  thing,  but    I    sat 


NEARING    A    CLIMAX 


251 


down,  too,  for  I  felt  that  1  didn't  amount  to  much 
if  I  wasn't  as  good  as  he.  "You  drove  off  a  calf 
of  ours  yesterday,"  I  said;  "will  you  be  kind 
enough  to  tell  me  what  it  was  for?" 

He  grinned  as  he  answered  me:  "Bringing 
cattle  from  Canada  into  the  United  States,  Tariff, 
$10.00  a  head  on  grown  cattle  and  $2.00  a  head 
on  anything  under  a  year  old;   so  I  seized  the  calf." 

"But,"  I  said,  "that  calf  wasn't  really  brough*- 
over  at  all.  It  belongs  on  the  Canadian  side.  It 
only  chased  across  after  the  girl  who  went  to  feed 
it.  She  could't  help  that,  though,  maybe,  she 
ought  to  have  closed  the  gate  after  her.  You 
surely  can't  call  that  smuggling  cattle  across  the 
line." 

The  fellow  scowled.  "I  only  know  that  I  saw  a 
calf  brought  across  the  line  and  that  I  seized  it,  as 
is  my  duty  to  do  when  the  tariff  is  not  met.  I'm 
up  to  your  tricks.  And  there's  another  thing,  only 
a  little  thing,  that  must  be  settled.  You've 
brought  milk  from  Canada  into  the  United  States." 

"That  isn't  so"  I  said;  "our  cows  are  not  on 
the  Canadian  side,  just  now." 

"I  didn't  say  they  were.  I  said  you'd  been 
bringing  milk  here  from  Canada.  The  vvoman  who 
smuggled  the  calf  over  had  a  pail  of  milk  with  her, 


252 


AN   ODD    SITUATION 


There  was  at  least  a  gallon  of  it  and  the  duty  is 
five  cents." 

"But  that  was  only  the  skim  milk  she'd  just 
carried  across  for  the  calf.  It  was  American  milk 
and  there's  no  duty  on  milk  going  into  Canada,  any- 
how." 

Gaherty  only  laughed:  "I  saw  it  come  from  the 
other  side." 

I  needn't  say  that  this  made  me  about  as  irrita- 
ted as  a  man  could  be  with  anything  small  and 
contemptible.  Here  was  this  man  knowing  as 
well  as  I  did,  that  there  was  nothing  wrong,  no 
idea  of  violating  the  custom  laws  in  all  that  hap- 
pened with  the  calf  or  milk,  or  in  the  trouble  of 
poor  Lucinda  Briggs;  yet  he  was  trying  to  make 
us  wrong  in  ^he  eyes  of  the  government  and  to 
bring  to  us  a  iot  of  annoyance  and  expense.  A 
nice  condition  of  affairs  on  the  line  between  two 
people  of  the  same  blood !  I  was  on  the  point  of 
breaking  out  and  saying  what  I  shouldn't  have 
done,  when  I  reflected  that  this  fellow  wouldn't 
care  and  that  the  best  I  could  do  was  to  be  as 
shrewd  and  conciliatory  as  I  knew  how. 

"We  won't  talk  about  the  milk,"  I  said.  "I 
came  over  only  about  the  calf.  I  know  what  the 
tariff  on  calves  is,  and,  though  it  is  all  wrong,   we 


NEARING    A   CLIMAX 


253 


are  willing  to  pay  the  $2.00  to  get  that  calf  back. 
Here  it  is  and  I'll  take  the  calf  back  with  me." 

Gaherty  laughed  again  then,  wickedly:  "You 
can't  have  that  calf  for  $2  00," he  answered;  "it's 
seized.     You  can't  get  off  that  way." 

I  didn't  know  what  to  say.  I  was  foolish,  I 
guess,  when  I  did  speak,  for  it  had  nothing  to  do 
with  the  calf. 

"I'm  an  older  man  than  you  and  not  much 
heavier.  Will  you  come  out  into  the  road  with 
me  for  five  minutes.?" 

He  only  glared  and  said  he  didn't  want  any  of 
my  impertinence  and  walked  out  of  the  room, 
hurrying  a  little  as  he  got  near  the  door.  As  for 
me,  I  could  only  go  home  and  tell  David  all 
about  it. 


CHAPTER  XXI. 

AT  CLOSE  QUARTERS. 

The  roadbed's  rough — there  is  no  doubt  of  that — 

In  better  shape  by  far  it  ought  to  be, 
And  yet  the  toll  is  high,  and  getting  fat 

And  bloated  is  the  old  monopoly. 
Remorseless,  grasping,  now,  as  in  the  past, 

Upon  each  journey  made  it  must  befall 
That  we  are  taxed:  it  comes  to  this  at  last: 

We  pay  the  fee  or  travel  not  at  all! 

We  may  not  go  where  pleasure-gardens  lie 

But  Wasted  Time  demands  a  greedy  rate, 
Nor  where  full  appetites  we'd  gratify 

But  Illness  stands  relentless  at  the  gate. 
We  may  not  even  from  the  highway  stray 

Nor  go  afi'jld.to  pluck  a  passion-flower 
Ere  settlement  with  Conscience  by  the  way 

We  make  perforce,  for  we  are  in  her  power. 

Shall  we  rebel?     WhL.jin  would  be  the  good? 

They  hold  a  charter,  the  oppressors  say — 
A  charter  which  has  all  attacks  withstood, 

And  which  expires  but  on  the  judgment  day, 
It  may  be  so,  hut  grudging  is  our  dole; 

It  may  be  so,  but  '  ard  it  is  to  see 
These  grim  gate  keepers  stand  and  take  their  toll 

Along  the  highways  of  eternity. 

—  The  Tax-Gatherers, 
254 


AT    CLOSE    QUARTERS 


255 


I  suppose  it  falls  to  all  of  us  to  endure  a  great 
deal  in  this  wicked  world.  We  can't  help  that; 
we  have  to  pay  the  piper  continually,  r-o  matter 
what  sort  of  life  we  lead,  but  sometinnes  I  thinK 
the  assessor  is  hardly  fair  in  his  figures.  Sure  \ 
we  well-meaning  people  were  having  rather  a  hard 
time  of  it. 

I  found  David;  I  talked  with  him,  and  was  li" 
a  way  puzzled  by  the  manner  in  which  he  acted. 
He  seemed  almost  heavy  and  dull  about  it,  and 
not  caring  much.  1  couldn't  understand  it  at  the 
time,  but  later,  when  I  had  a  chance  to  think  it 
over.  I  could  see  how  it  was  that  he,  who  had 
most  at  stake,  must  have  worried  and  fretted  over 
the  whole  business  for  a  year  or  two,  and  that, 
whatever  his  listlessness  or  his  apathy  nov^  it  must 
be  the  outcome  of  the  long  strain  and  trial,  and 
that  he  had  only  wearied  of  facing  a  stronger  force 
on  unfair  grounds.  I  told  him  about  Gaherty  and 
the  calf,  and  thought  he  would  get  mad  and  try  at 
once  to  think  of  some  way  of  getting  even,  but 
he  did  not  seem  to  care.  All  he  had  to  say  was 
that  we  must  do  the  best  w^e  could,  and  that  may- 
be Vv'e  could  come  out  all  right.  I  thought  he 
would  call  in  the  tov»n  constab'e  and  make  some 
sort  of  effort  to  get  the  calf  back,  and   I  told   him 


■gi^^^ 


256 


AN    ODD    SITUATION 


SO,  but  he  only  laughed  and  said  we  could  not 
"replevin"  things  from  the  national  government. 
He  seemed  wearied  of  the  whole  thing,  and  I  must 
say  I  half  agreed  with  him  in  the  feeling.  We  had 
done  our  best;  we  had  tried  to  do  right,  but  we 
had  been  hunted  too  sharply  and  were  nearly 
"tuckered  out,"  as  they  say  in  the  country  when 
they  are  tired. 

David  had  simply  nothing  to  advise.  "If 
Gaherty  won't  give  up  the  calf,"  he  said,  "there 
is  nothing  for  us  to  do  but  let  it  go.  We  are  not 
strong  enough  to  make  any  fight.  All  we  can  do 
is  to  knuckle  down.  I  suppose  we  might  make  a 
struggle,  end  I  could  get  all  the  friends  I  have  to 
help  me,  and  maybe  there  would  be  a  reversal  of 
the  seizure  some  time,  and  then  the  calf  would 
have  cost  two  pr  three  hundred  dollars.  There's 
nothing  to  do." 

I  didn't  argue  with  him;  there  was  no  use  in 
that.  I  went  away  gritting  my  teeth,  and  not 
over-satisfied  with  it  all.  I  didn't  believe  in  doing 
anything  fc»olish,  I  ut  I  didn't  want  to  see  that 
fellow  Gaherty  having  it  all  his  own  way/  I  was 
in  this  mood,  vexed  and  rather  vengeful,  when  I 
met  John  Cross  again  and  told  him  all  about  the 
calf.     He'd  been  at  work  on  his  end  of  the  farm, 


AT    CLOSE    QUARTERS 


257 


and  before  this  didn't  even  know  that  the  calf  had 
been  seized.  He  would  hardly  believe  me  at  first, 
but  when  it  finally  dawned  upon  him  that  hostili- 
ties had  actually  opened  again,  his  face  began  to 
twitch,  and  I  could  see  that  he  was  much  affected. 
He  said  not  a  word,  but  went  away,  walking 
slowly  with  his  head  down. 

It  was  about  3  o'clock  on  the  afternoon   of  the 
very  day  when  I  had  seen  Gaherty  and  then  talked 
with  David  and,  later  still,  met  John  Cross,  when, 
as  I  was  working  in  the  barn,  I  heard  a  great  racket 
down  the  road.     I  ran  out,  and  there  saw  that  the 
gate  across  the  way,  through  which  the   calf   had 
come  the  day  before,  was  open  again,  and   that  in 
the  middle  of  the  road  just   east   of  it,  stood  our 
Alice.     To  see  our  sweet  young  mother  there — she 
with  all  her  dignity  and  quiet  ways — was  a  surprise 
which  would  have   made   me  stand   stock  still   if 
there  L  id  been  nothing  else  to  note.      But  that  was 
not  all.     Of  course  it  was  not  Alice  who  had  made 
the  noise,  and  of  course  it    was    Lucinda   Briggs. 
There  she  was,  about   twenty   rods   up   the   road, 
dashing  about  and  waving  her  apron  and    scream- 
ing, while  just  ahead  of  her,  and   bobbing  about 
and  trying  to  get  past  her  and  back,   was  the   calf 
which  had   been  the   cause  of   so  much   trouble! 

17 


258 


AN    ODD    SITUATION 


And  away  in  the  distance,  up  at  the  corners  across 
from  Vincent's  place,  I  could  see  John  Cross  com- 
ing down  toward  us  at  a  run.  I  couldn't  under- 
stand it  all,  and  stood  still,  wondering  what  would 
happen.      And  something  happened  very  socn. 

The  calf,  tired  all  at  once  of  being  headed  off 
by  Lucinda,  came  tearing  down  the  road  toward 
Alice.  It  would  have  passed  her,  but,  imitating 
Lucinda,  she  waved  her  apron  at  it,  and  it  stopped 
and  looked  about,  bewildered.  Then,  seeing  the 
gate  open,  and  no  doubt  recognizing  its  old 
quarters,  it  made  a  dive  into  ihe  field,  and  when 
it  had  done  so  Alice  ran  up  and  closed  the  gate  and 
put  in  the  wooden  pin.      We  had  the  calf  again! 

She  turned  from  the  gate;  as  she  did  so  she  saw 
me  looking  at  her,  and  her  face  became  as  red, 
almost,  as  one  of  the  peonies  in  our  front  yard. 
"O,  Jason,"  she  stammered  out,  and  was  starting 
across  to  explain  something  about  it  all — when 
there  was  a  rush  of  footsteps,  from  the  east  this  t 
time,  and  Gaherty  came  running  up  and  caught  her 
fiercely  by  the  arm  and  whirled  her  about  and 
roared  out  hoarsely: 

"You! — ^you'll  interfere  with  the  government, 
will  you  !  Open  that  gate  and  let  that  calf  out  I 
Quick!" 


AT    CLOSE    QUARTERS 


259 


I've  been  angered  a  good  many  times  in  my  life 
— not  so  often  as  the  average  man,  mnybe,  for  I'm 
pretty  cool,  and  I  don't  like  a  row  of  any  sort — 
but  I  never  knew  before  what  it  was  to  feel  mur- 
derous! I  can  remember  even  now,  in  a  queer  sort 
of  way,  what  happened  to  me  in  that  moment.  I 
felt  tears  come  suddenly  in  my  eyes  and  run  down 
my  cheeks,  and  I  felt  every  muscle  and  nerve  in 
my  clumsy  body  stiffen  and  tauten,  while  my  teeth 
came  together  so  that  I  could  hear  them  grate.  I 
leaned  forward,  braced.  In  another  moment  I 
would  have  been  across  the  road  and  upon  the  man 
who  was  clutching  the  arm  of  our  dear  frightened 
girl,  and  once  there,  I  don't  know  what  I  would 
have  done.  I  should  have  killed  him,  I  fear.  I 
should  have  taken  in  my  hands  the  cowardly  dog 
who  could  so  hurt  a  woman,  and  I  should  have 
just  jammed  him  down  on  that  summer- dried  road. 
I  should  have  fumbled  around  until  my  right 
hand  got  hold  of  his  throat  and  the  thumb  on  one 
side  and  the  fingers  on  the  other  had  got  in  behind 
and  around  his  wind-pipe,  and  then  I  should  have 
squeezed  that  close  until  it  was  a  mere  flabby 
thing,  like  the  cast-off  skin  of  a  snake,  while,  with 
that  grip,  I  pounded  his  head  up  and  dovvn  on  the 
road's  hard  surface  until  his  eyeballs  bulged    forth 


mei 


260 


AN    ODD    SITUATION 


and  his  foul-speaking  tongue  protruded  from  his 
mouth.  I  don't  knew;  I  know  only  of  the  spirit 
that  possessed  me  then,  and  of  the  thoughts  that 
flashed  through  my  brain,  as  it  were,  in  a  single 
second.  I've  read  somewhere  that  when  a  man  is 
drowning  there  comes  to  him  in  a  moment  a  recol- 
lection of  all  the  gravest  things  he  has  done  in  all 
his  life.  I  suppose  it's  all  some  fancy  of  the 
writers  or  some  legend  that  has  grown  up,  but 
somehow  there  does — as  I  have  known  ever  since 
that  moment — come  to  a  man  swiftly,  in  an  emer- 
gency, a  sort  of  back  view  of  himself.  A  lot  of 
things  came  to  me,  and  then  I  forgot  about  it  all, 
and  knew  only  that  my  muscles  were  stifi  and  that 
there  was  Gaherty,  and  that  he  was  hurting  our 
Alice.  All  this  was  in  an  instant.  I  plunged 
ahead — but  I  was  too  late,  and  I've  thanked  God 
for  it ! 

As  I  started,  there  was  a  crash  beside  me,  a  little 
to  the  left,  where  the  gate  opened  from  our  side 
into  the  road.  The  gate  was  not  a  very  heavy 
one;  it  was  light  and  made  to  swing  easily,  and 
was  of  half-inch  pine.  There  was  a  rush  of  feet, 
a  smash  and  splintering,  a  big  man  went  by  me 
like  lightning,  and  came  down  upon  the  one  who 
was  clutching  Alice.     It  was  David.      He  had  come 


AT   CLOSE    QUARTLRS 


261 


from  out  the  fields  to  the  south,  and  had  seen  the 
man  in  the  road  lay  hands  upon  his  wife.  That 
was  enough — that  one  instant's  glance — to  trans- 
fornri  a  peaceable,  well-intentioned  man,  one  with 
a  full  regard  for  the  powers  that  be,  into  something 
fierce  and  dreadful  as  a  savage  wild  beast.  What 
could  stop  him!  No  fumbling  at  a  gate-latch  for 
him  then!  He  had  hurled  himself  through  those 
pine  boards  and  there  he  was  upon  the  cruel  and 
unmannerly  thing  with  the  woman. 

it  was  all  over  in  a  moment.  As  David  leaped 
down  upon  Gaherty  he  seized  him  with  both  hands 
and  tore  him  away  and  swirled  him  about,  and  then 
just  "slatted"  him,  as  they  say,  down  toward  the 
fence  and  upon  the  ground.  Gaherty  went  like  a 
mere  clod  of  something,  and  fairly  curled  and 
quivered  as  he  struck.  And  then,  with  a  roar,  like 
a  wild  beast  again,  David  ran  at  the  fence  on  the 
other  side  and  tore  off  the  light  white-ash  top-rail 
and  whirled  it  about  his  head  to  bring  it  down  upon 
the  half  senseless,  quaking  being  at  the  roadside. 

It  was  well  that  I,  who  had  got  half  way  across 
the  road  before  David  rushed  by  me,  had  re- 
gained now  some  trifle  of  my  sense.  It  was  well 
that  some  sudden  glimmering  of  reason  went 
through  my    mind,  and    made  me   act   swiftly.      I 


262 


AN    ODD    SITUATION 


don't  know  what  made  me  do  it — I  was  crazy-mad 
myself — but  I  caught  David's  arms  as  the  rail 
whirled  aloft,  and  as  it  came  down  it  was  swerved 
aside  from  what  it  was  aimed  for,  and  broke  and 
splintered  upon  the  hardened  roadway. 

David  gripped  me  before  he  thought,  but,  as  our 
faces  came  together,  he  seemed  to  realize  some- 
thing, and  stopped  suddenly  and  let  me  go.  He 
stood  still  there,  an  odd,  choking  sound  coming 
from  his  throat,  and  then  reached  out  his  arms 
toward  Alice,  who  came  into  them,  crying  softly. 
The  man  on  the  ground  was  recovering  now,  and 
raised  his  head.  I  laid  my  hand  on  David's  arm 
and  asked  him  to  go  to  the  house  with  Alice.  He 
looked  at  me  as  if  he  were  dazed,  and  so  stood  for 
a  little  time,  and  then,  putting  his  arm  around  the 
woman,  drew  her  away  toward  our  own  gate.  He 
had  nearly  reached  the  gate  when  he  took  his  arm 
away  from  her  and  came  stalking  back;  not  fast, 
but  with  a  look  on  his  face  I  didn't  like.  Gaherty 
had  raised  himself  partly  up,  and  as  he  did  so  1 
had  put  my  arm  under  his  and  raised  him  to  his  feet. 
He  was  not  hurt  dangerously  anywhere,  but  he  was 
not  just  himself.  It  seemed  to  me  as  if  every  bone 
in  his  body  must  have  cracked  when  David  hurled 
him  down.  He  stood  there  so  as  David  came  back 
with  something  deadly  in  his  eyes. 


AT    CLOSE    QUARTERS 


263 


It  was  not  quite  murder,  though.  There  had 
come  some  self-control  to  the  maddened  man, 
though  his  face  was  dreadful.  He  came  up  ar  d 
stood  before  Gaherty  and  began  talking,  though 
his  voice  sounded  strange: 

"  Do  you  know,  that  you — that — that  you  touched 
Her!  Do  you  know  it!  And  here  you  are,  alive, 
now!  It's  wrong!  it's  all  wrong!  You  touched 
Her,  and  here  you  are,  alive!     I'll  kill  you!" 

He  was  quivering  all  over,  while  the  thing  be- 
fore him  was  shaking  in  mortal  terror.  Gaherty 
had  so  recovered  that  he  knew  where  he  was,  and 
the  awful  peril  he  was  in  at  that  moment.  I  was 
frightened  myself  at  first,  but  I  had  regained  all 
such  little  sense  as  I  owned  naturally  by  this  time, 
and  I  took  David  by  the  arm  and  pushed  him 
away.  He  looked  in  my  face  again  and  seemed  to 
understand,  and  turned  back  to  Alice  and  put  his 
arm  about  her  once  more,  and  so  they  went  away, 
finally,  to  the  house. 

I  stood  there  alone  with  Gaherty.  His  clothes 
were  dirty  from  the  rasping  way  in  which  he  had 
beeen  thrown  down  upon  the  road ;  his  face  was 
v/hite  and  a  little  blood  was  trickling  from  his 
nose.  He  was  a  solid  sort  of  fellow,  else  he  would 
never  have  recovered   so  soon    from  that    fearful 


264 


AN   ODD   SITUATION 


smashing  down  upon  the  dried  ground.  It  was 
not  his  bruised  and  bloody  look,  though,  that  struck 
me:  it  was  the  devilish  expression  of  his  counte- 
nance. If  ever  hate  and  a  fierce,  currish  desire 
for  revenge  showed  in  human  features  it  was  in  the 
face  of  Gaherty  as  he  stood  there  looking  at  David 
and   Alice   as   they  went   up  toward  the    house. 

Finally  I  spoke: 

"Well.?" 

He  paid  no  attention  at  first,  but  after  a  while 
condescendi  o  look  at  me.  He  snarled  like  a 
dog  when  he  answered:  « 

"Get  away!  get  away!  He's  threatened  mur- 
der! I'll  have  vengeance  for  this!  Get  away,  I 
tell  you!" 

I  wasn't  much  impressed  by  him,  ugly  as  he 
looked.  I  thought  of  what  John  Cross  had  said 
about  snakes,  and  was  inclined  to  agree  with  that 
sallow-faced  crank.  But  I  wanted  to  be  practical 
and  wise,  and  so  I  told  the  man  he'd  better  go 
home  and  be  washed  and  get  himself  into  shape 
again.  He  only  glared  at  me  and  almost  screamed 
out: 

"You've  run  against  the  government  of  the 
United  States,  and  you'll  suffer  for  it!  And  that 
man  threatened  murder!      Oh,  I'll  get  even!" 


II 


AT   CLOSE   QUARTERS 


265 


I  was  going  to  answer  him  when  I  heard  a  soft 
footstep  beside  me,  and  turned  my  head  and  there 
was  John  Cross.  He  had  come  running  down  the 
road,  but  all  that  I  have  told  had  happened  so 
quickly  that  he  couldn't  reach  us  in  time  to  take 
any  part  in  it.  He  didn't  notice  me  at  all.  He 
only  began  walking  around  us,  as  I  have  seen  a 
dog  walk  around  some  other  dog  upon  which  it 
was  about  to  leap. 


CHAPTER  XXII. 


AMONG  THE  HONEYSUCKLES. 

It  was  Hakoii  Jaegcnhortals 

Stood  amidst  the  fray. 
Usher  at  Valhalla's  portals 

Hakon  was  that  day. 
Joyed  he  in  his  bowstring's  twang 

(Baresark  he,  at  times); 
As  each  arrow  sped  he  sang, 

Shouted  rugged  rhymes; 
[.oudly  cried  lie  to  the  arrow; 
"Pierce  the  bone  and  taste  the  marrow!" 
Drew  each  shaft  back  to  its  head 

Till  its  either  fang 
Lay  mid-bow;  and  as  it  sped, 
Fiercely  Hakon  sang; 
"O,  my  arrow, 
Seek  the  marrow!" 

— S(7^a  of  the  Fjord  Fight. 

Gaherty  looked  at  John  Cross  contemptuously 
but  I  did  not  feel  that  way.  The  gaunt,  pallid 
creature  circled  about  us  saying  nothing  and  look- 
ing only  at  Gaherty  until  I  put  my  hand  upon  his 
arm  and  asked    him  what    silliness  he  was  up  to 

now? 

866  .        ' 


AMONG    THE    HONEYSUCKLES 


267 


He  made  no  answer  but  tried  at  first  to  get  away 
from  me.      Gaherty  stood  looking  on   but    paying 

little  attention  further  than  to  ask    what  the 

fool  was  trying  to  do?  Gaherty  was  a  little  too 
much  interested  in  his  own  affairs,  just  then,  to 
think  particularly  of  the  actions  of  a  creature  he'd 
always  seemed  to  consider  half  crazy  and,  after  a 
last  scowl  at  me,  he  went  off  toward  Vincent's 
house,  wiping  his  bloody  face  with  his  handker- 
chief as  he  went  along. 

John  Cross  became  calm  enough  as  soon  as 
Gaherty  was  out  of  sight  and  asked  me  what  I 
was  hanging  on  to  his  arm  so  for?  I  told  him  that 
I  was  doing  it  just  to  be  sure  that  he'd  behave 
himself  and  he  declared  that  he  was  all  right.  "I 
just  wanted  to  have  another  good  look  at  the 
fellow,"  said  he,  "and  that  was  why  I  walked 
around  him  so.  Worse  than  the  water  snakes, 
isn't  he,  Jason?" 

I  didn't  answer  his  question  but  told  him,  pretty 
roughly,  that  I  wanted  to  know  how  that  calf  got 
out  of  Vincent's  barn? 

"S'pose  some  one  must  have  left  a  door  open," 
he  answered. 

"Well  then,  how  did  it  get  out  of  the  barnyard?" 
"S'pose  some  one  must  have  left  the  gate  open." 


268 


AN    ODD    SITUATION 


"Did  you  do  it?" 

'*\Vliat  would  I  do  it  for?  How'd  I  know  where 
the  calf  was,  anyway?" 

"I  told  you  where  the  calf  was  when  I  met  you 
early  in  the  day.  And  how  came  you  in  the  road; 
and  how  came  Lucinda  Briggs  behind  the  calf?" 

John  Cross  grinned  and  his  gaunt  face  took  on  a 
look  of  great  slyness  as  he  explained:  "You  see 
it  was  this  way:  I  was  coming  down  the  north 
and  south  road,  when  I  see  the  calf  at  the  crossing 
and  frisking  about  and  kind  o'  working  its  way 
east.  'It's  our  calf  as  much  as  anybody's  again,' 
I  said  and  I  hollered  to  Lucinda  Briggs,  who  was 
out-doors  up  by  your  house  and  she  and  Alice  both 
came  down.  Then  Lucinda  got  up  west  of  the 
calf  and  drove, it  along  and  I  stayed  at  the  crossing 
for  awhile  and  then  ran  down.  You  saw  all  that 
happened." 

He  looked  so  simple  while  he  was  telling  this 
that  I  almost  believed  him  for  a  moment.  I  knew 
he  was  lying,  though.  That  calf  had  been  in  Vin- 
cent's stable  and  the  stable  door  and  barnyard 
door  had  to  be  opened  to  let  it  out.  They  were 
both  shut  now — I  could  see  that  from  where  we 
were — and  I  knew  that  John  Cross  had  done  the 
job.     I  didn't  say  anything.     What  was  the  use? 


AMONG    THE    HONEYSUCKLES 


269 


I  went  to  the  house  and  found,  from  what  Alice 
and  Lucinda  Briggs  said,  that  it  was  just  as  I  had 
supposed.  They  first  heard  John  Cross  shouting 
and  saw  the  calf.  Then  Lucinda  rushed  out  as  a 
matter  of  course  and  Alice  acted  without  thinking. 
She  was  very  sober  over  it  I  could  see  that  she 
feared  for  David  As  for  him,  he  had  nothing  to 
say  until  we  ^ /  i  alone.  "We  must  look  out 
now,"  was  all  iic  had  to  offer,  even  then. 

As  for  me,  I  thought  it  very  singular  if  lightning 
didn't  strike  at  on:e  pretty  hard.  I  expected  that 
David  would  be  arrested  promptly.  It  was  true 
that  where  he  had  grappled  Gaherty  was  on  the 
Canadian  side  of  the  road,  and  it  was  probable 
enough  that  neither  Gaherty  nor  ,  incent  had  any 
proof  as  to  who  let  oat  the  calf,  but  I  thought  that 
in  Gaherty's  fearful  rage  he  would  do  almost  any- 
thing, off-hand.  He  was  foxier  than  I  thought, 
though. 

A  few  days  more  passed  and  nothing  happened. 
The  calf  was  not  interfered  with  in  its  field  on 
the  Canadian  side  and  Lucinda  Briggs,  as  you  may 
wager,  was  mighty  careful  to  ^asten  the  gate  be- 
hind her  when  she  went  across  to  feed  it.  We 
were  working  over  in  the  east  field  most  of  the 
time  now,  or    in    the     field,  just   opposite,  on  the 


270 


AN    ODD    SITUATION 


Canadian  side,  there  being  potatoes  in  one  and 
a  crop  of  clover  which  needed  curing  in  the  other, 
Jennison  was  rambling  about  the  country  v/ith  his 
gun,  as  usual,  looking  for  a  woodcock,  for  they 
were  in  season  now  though  it  waj  early  for  other 
game,  and  often  stopping  to  chat  with  us,  but  of 
Gaherty  we  saw  Jittle.  I  had  noticed  him  on'-e 
or  twice  in  the  road  between  us  and  the  crossing, 
but  he  had  disappeared  mysteriously  almost  as  soon 
as  I  caught  sight  of  him.  The  thing  puzzled  me 
and  I  resolved  to  keep  a  look-out.  I  knew,  of 
course,  tliiU  he  wa;:  'n  hiding  and  watching  us  but 
just  where  he  went  to  floored  me.  There  appeared 
to  be  no  place  along  the  road  where  a  man  could 
get  out  of  view. 

Not  far  from  the  creek  on  our  side  of  the  road 
the  bushes  had  grown  up  pretty  thickly  beside  the 
board  fence.  There  were  blackberry  and  elder- 
berry bushes  and  a  mass  of  wild  honeysuckles. 
The  honeysuckles  were  in  bloom  now  and  made  a 
pretty  picture  and  the  smell  of  them  was  a  pleasant 
thing  as  one  passed  by.  All  this  shrubbery  was 
thickest,  not  in  the  hollow  close  to  the  creek,  but 
on  the  rise  where  the  road  become  level  again  with 
the  general  lay  of  the  land.  Just  along  here  one 
day,  I  saw  Gaherty  walking  and   then,  as    usual, 


AMONG    THE    HONEYSUCKLES 


271 


lost  sight  of  hin.  suddenly.  That  set  me  thinking 
and  when  we  canle  home  to  supper  I  didn't  walk 
across  the  field  with  David  but  came  up  along  the 
road  and  was  joined  on  my  way  by  John  Cross  who 
had  been  among  the  potato  hills  putting  on  green 
to  keep  off  the  bugs.  When  we  got  to  where  the 
bushes  were  I  stopped  and  began  to  examine  things 
and  John  Cross  looked  on  curiously. 

It  didn't  take  me  long  to  find  what  1  was  look- 
ing for.  A  man  needs  a  bigger  nest  than  a  robin 
does.  There  was  Gaherty's  hiding-place  and  spy- 
ing-place,  and  it  was  a  good  one!  At  one  spot, 
all  about  ont'  of  the  oak  fence-posts,  the  bushes 
were  particularly  thick  on  the  inside  and  they  had 
grown  until  they  reached  through  between  the 
boards  and  hanging  over  the  fence  had  made  a 
little  arbor  in  front  of  the  post,  on  the  road-side, 
big  enough  for  a  man  to  sit  in  and  be  almost  hid 
from  view.  He  could  sit  there  in  ?  bower  of 
honeysuckles  and  one  could  pass  close  by  without 
noticing  him.  At  the  foot  of  the  fence-post  lay  a 
big  stone  with  a  flat  top  which  had  been  brought 
there  to  serve  for  a  seat.  It  was  all  clear  enough; 
this  was  Gaherty's  watch-house;  from  it,  peering 
through  the  bushes  in  front  and  at  the  sides  or  the 
fence  behind,  he  had  a  view  of  the  fields  all  about 


.y* 


272 


AN    ODD   SITUATION 


and  of  the  road  in  either  direction.  We  couldn't 
get  across  the  line  anywhere  without  being  seen  by 
him  when  he  was  in  this  hiding  place. 

There  were  charred  matches  on  the  ground  and 
every  indication  that  the  man  spent  a  good  deal  of 
his  time  there.  I  laughed  when  I  saw  it  all. 
"Here's  his  hole!" 

John  Cross  was  all  eagerness:  "What  do  you 
mean.-"'  he  said. 

"Why,  I  mean  that  here  is  where  Gaherty  hides 
when  he  is  watching  us.  Can't  you  seethe  signs,? 
There's  where  he  sits  ,-  there's  a  hair  from  his 
ugly  head  showing  jusc  where  it  comes  against  the 
post  as  he  sits  here." 

I've  been  out  with  a  dog  sometimes  after  a 
woodchuck,  or  some  other  wild  thing,  and  have 
seen  what  we  w.ere  hunting  glide  away  when  the 
dog  was  exploring  some  brush  heap  at  a  distance. 
Then  I  have  called  the  dog  to  me  and  put  him  on 
the  warm  trail.  How  his  eyes  would  gleam  and 
the  hairs  on  his  back  stiffen  as  he  threw  his  nose 
to  the  ground  and  went  on  after!  John  Cross, 
when  I  showed  him  where  Gaherty  watched,  maao 
me  think  of  a  dog  again.  He  had  only  to  growl  to 
make  the  thing  complete.  The  skin  drawn  tight 
as  it  was  over  the  bones  of  his  face,  twitched   and 


■  f. 


AMONG    THE    HONEYSUCKLES 


273 


worked,  his  lips  drew  apart,  showing  his  teeth, 
and  his  breath  came  fast.  He  looked  at  this  place 
with  a  kind  of  fascination.  It  was  quite  a  time  be- 
fore he  spoke: 

"And  there's  where  he  siis  and  there's  where 
his  head  comes  against  the  post,  just  where  that 
hair  is.?" 

"Of  course.      Can't  you  see.?" 

He  walked  all  about  and  looked  at  the  place  and 
got  over  the  fence  and  examined  it  from  the  other 
side,  then  clambered  back  again  and  came  and 
stood  beside  me. 

"Do  you  s'pose  he  watches  here  nights.?" 

"Of  course  he  does.  That's  the  time  he  ex- 
pects us  to  try  to  do  something  against  the  law. 
He  never  comes  out  from  Vincent's  before  ten  or 
eleven  o'clock  in  the  forenoon  and  that  must  mean 
that  he's  up  late.  The  fellow  keeps  a  good  look- 
out.     I'll  say  that  for  him." 

John  Cross  laughed  until  I  told  him  that  I  didn't 
see  anything  so  very  funny  about  it.  It  was  droll, 
and  a  good  thing,  of  course,  that  we  knew  where 
Gaherty's  watching-place  was,  but  J  didn't  see 
any  reason  for  going  wild  over  it.  We  were  in  a 
bad  way  at  the  best,  I  said;  the  man  was  deter- 
mined to  make  us  come  to  grief  anyhow;  he  had 
19 


274 


AN   ODD    SITUATION 


the  government  back  of  him,  and  we'd  get  the 
worst  of  it  in  the  end.  But  at  all  I  said  John 
Cross  only  laughed  the  more  and,  vexed  with  him, 
I  started  home,  he  following  along  by  my  side  and 
finally  showing  a  little  more  sense.  That  is,  he 
stopped  laughing,  though  he  didn't  say  anything. 
I  noticed  that,  when  we  separated,  he  walked  in 
a  more  jaunty  way  than  I  had  seen  him  do  for 
months.  "John  Cross  is  getting  better,"  I  said  to 
mysrlf.      I  diJn't  know  what  I  was  talking  about! 

The  next  day  passed  without  anything  happen- 
ing, and,  though  I  kept  my  eye  on  the  road  at 
times,  I  didn't  see  anything  of  Gaherty.  Across 
the  way  John  Cross  was  still  working  among  the 
potatoes  and  all  went  on  peaceably.  I  felt  well 
as  I  started  along  the  road  down  to  the  field  the 
next  morning.    . 

Have  you  ever  strolled  down  a  country  road 
early  in  the  morning  in  June  or  July?  If  you 
haven't,  yo'i  have  missed  something  of  what  is  good 
in  this  world.  You  step  higher,  somehow,  as  you 
leave  the  door-step,  and  there  come  to  your  senses 
all  the  glisten  and  glory  of  the  hour.  The  dew 
is  upon  the  leaves  and  flowers  yet  nnd  flashes 
from  all  the  glorious  coloring,  and  the  fragrance  of 
the  flowera  fills  the  air  more  th«a  at  any  other 


AMONG    THE    HONEYSUCKLES 


275 


time  in  the  day.  Off  over  the  fields  the  grass 
looks  like  a  sea  of  silver,  and  if  there  are  dark 
spots  anywhere  it  is  where  the  cows  have  lain  over 
night,  and  you  can  see  steam  coming  up  there. 
Often,  when  a  boy,  sent  early  for  the  cows,  after 
starting  them  up  I've  stood  on  those  spots  warm- 
ing my  bare  feet.  And  from  almost  every  shrub 
and  tree,  even  as  late  as  July,  comes  such  a  burst 
of  music  as  does  one's  heart  good.  The  meadow- 
lark  sometimes  rises  from  the  stubble  of  grass  with 
the  same  wonderful  call  he  had  in  early  spring,  and 
the  bobolink  sings  until  his  young  are  born,  and 
the  orioles  which  cone  north  to  us  in  such  num- 
bers are  piping  wherever  trees  are.  As  for  the 
robin  and  thrush  ..ad  the  song-sparrow — why 
speak  of  them.'     We  know  them! 

There  is  something  about  the  summer  morning 
aside  from  all  this,  tcx? — I  suppose  it  is  in  the  air, 
in  the  pureness  and  strongness  of  it,  which  has 
come  in  &  way  we  do  not  understand  from  the 
passing  of  thes^ht.  You  feel  you  are  a  great  man 
X3  you  step  out.  if  you  be  early  enough. 

I  went  iown  the  road  toward  the  east  field, 
rejoicing  ir  all  the  splendor  of  nature,  and  th'^'Ught 
cf  aithmg  in  particular  until  I  came   to  where  the 

ieysu<;iklM  md  Gtherty'i  hiding-place  were.  At 


2/6 


AN    ODD    SITUATION 


I  came  up  to  that  place,  inhaling  the  odor  of  the 
flowers,  I  thought  to  myself  how  foolish  we  were 
in  allowing  this  little  difference  with  custom-house 
officers  to  trouble  us  so  much,  and  how  it  would 
soon  be  all  over,  somehow,  and  but  a  thing  to 
laugh  at.  So  hopeful  and  strong  are  men  of  a 
summer  morning!  And  then,  just  as  I  got  oppo- 
site it,  I  looked  at  the  little  bower. 

There  was  Gaherty,  sitting  on  the  stone,  his 
head  leaned  back  against  the  post  and  his  eyes 
fixed  on  me  as  placidly  as  you  please!  I  jumped 
back  a  little  as  I  saw  him,  then  I  got  half  mad, 
as  a  man  does  when  he  has  been  startled,  and 
walked  right  up  to  him, 

"You're  out  early,"  I  said. 

He  didn't  answer;  he  looked  at  me  steadily 
but  he  never  moved.  The  arrogance  and  airs  of 
the  man  made  me  mad  now,  clear  througb.  I 
didn't  much  care  what  I  said  to  him.  "You're 
a  sneak!"  I  roared  out;  "a  sneak,  hiding  there  in 
the  bushes  to  watrh  better  people  than  yourself! 
yi^f  don't  yoa  speak  up  like  a  man.^" 

He  did  not  reply,  but  nHH  looked  at  me  in  that 
easy,  mdoient  way.  I  walked  close  up  to  him 
witk  my  blood  boiling,  but  he  liiiin't  move.  There 
came  an  awful  feehng  ovtt  me.     The   eyes  of  the 


AMONG    THE    HONEYSUCKLES 


277 


man  sitting  there  never  turned;  they  only  stared 
at  me  steadily.  There  was  not  a  wink  of  the  eye- 
lids, and  as  I  stood,  half  dazed,  I  noticed  in  a 
dreamy  way  that  upon  one  of  his  hands,  which  lay 
in  his  lap,  drops  of  dew  had  gathered.  That  hand 
could  not  have  been  moved  for  hours!  I  trembled 
as  the  reason  of  the  thing  forced  itself  upon  me. 
The  man  was  dead ! 

I  staggered  back  into  the  middle  of  the  road. 
I  looked  again  at  the  arbor  opening  to  be  sure  I 
was  in  my  right  mind.  There  sat  Gaherty  still, 
his  eyes  seeming  to  follow  me,  somehow,  but  with- 
out any  movement  of  them! 

I  don't  know  how  it  is  or  why  it  is;  I  don't  know 
that  I  have  ever  heard  or  read  anything  about  it, 
but  it  is  queer,  that  feeling  which  comes  to  a  man 
just  after  a  sudden,  fearful  shock.  A  numbness 
both  of  body  and  mind  The  senses,  blinded, 
are  stilled  and  gioping  somehow.  At  least  it  was 
that  way  with  me.  I  raised  my  head  and  looked 
about  me.  There  were  the  fields  bright  with 
the  morning  sun,  there  was  the  blue  sky  and 
there  were  the  birds,  singing  and  joyous.  All  of  it 
was  real.  And  there,  close  by  me,  was  something 
else,  the  empty  shell  of   what  had  held  a  soul. 

I  summoned  all  the  manhood  there  was   in    me. 


'»^A'SWi'Wff'fcffi!!!ir^.''V.it;!MIIMl~H..^l-... 


278 


AN    ODD    SITUATION 


I  walked  over  to  where  the  stanng  dead  man  sat 
and  grasped  his  shoulders.  He  did  not  yield  to 
my  touch.  And  then,  looking  closely,  I  saw  that 
he  was  held  to  the  post — held  there  by  some- 
thing which,  driven  through  it,  had  pierced  bone 
and  marrow  in  his  neck,  and  kept  him  thus,  impal- 
ed! 


CHAPTER   XXIII. 

POST  MORTEM 

What  is  the  weight  of  a  dead  man's  soul? 

Mathematician  , tell  me  that! 
Is  it  as  'twas  with  a  being's  whole: 

Did  it  lose  with  the  loss  of  a  habitat? 
How  would  it  bear  on  the  testing  scale? 

What  in  the  problem  is  thert  to  vex? 
Symbols  may  serve  you  which  seldom  tail: 

Tell  us  the  equal  of  this  odd  "x"! 
What  is  the  weight  of  a  ucad  man's  soul? 

What  is  the  form  of  a  dcul  man's  soul? 

East  Indian  dreamer  tell  me  that! 
Has  it  the  shape  of  a  parchment  scroll, 

Is  it  cubic  or  oval  or  round  or  flat? 
Does  it  float  about  like  a  wisp  of  cloud, 

Something  drifting  athwart  the  sky. 
Or  is  it  an  entity,  heavy-browed, 

To  those  who  may  see  it,  who  have  the  Eye? 
What  is  the  form  of  a  dead  man's  soul? 

What  is  the  way  of  a  dead  man's  soul? 

Theologian,  tell  me  that! 
You,  with  the  unctuous  sentence  roll, 

You  with  the  platitude  that's  pat? 
Where  does  it  drift?     Is  its  orbit  guessed? 

Is  it's  course  made  plain  to  your  tutored  view? 
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AN    ODD    SITUATION 


Bah!  The  mere  babe  at  its  mother's  breast 

Can  tell  as  much  of  its  flight  as  you  ! 
What  is  the  way  of  a  dead  man's  soul? 

—  The  Seeker. 

I  cannot  tell  of  the  great  horror  that  came  upon 
me.  My  legs  were  weak  and  I  staggered  back 
and  leaned  against  the  fence  at  a  place  where 
there  were  no  bushes.  I  went  into  the  middle 
of  the  road  and  stood  with  my  back  toward  the 
thing  in  the  honeysuckle  arbor.  I  tried  to  think 
of  what  was  best  to  be  done,  and  there  came  upon 
me  a  sense  that  I  must  act  quickly — though 
I  don't  know  why  that  should  be — and  started 
wildly  down  the  road  on  a  run  and  never  stopp- 
ed until  I  reached  the  house.  I  saw  David  on 
the  stoop  and  called  out  to  him.  before  I  got 
near,  that  Gaherty  had  been  killed,  and  I  called 
out  the  same  thing  to  Vincent,  who  was  going  to 
his  barn  on  the  other  side  of  the  north  and  south 
road.  I  did  not  think  of  the  difference  between 
men,  nor  of  their  relations,  so  full  was  I  of  the 
dreadful  thing  I  had  seen.  I  yelled  ploud  trying 
to  reach  John  Cross  in  his  house,  but  no  answer 
came  and  I  concluded  he  must  have  gone  to  work. 
Then,  I  suppose  because  I  had  got  rid  of  some 
of  the  nervousness  in  me,  I  became  gradually  calm 


POST    MORTEM 


281 


and  was  a  sensible  man,  within  such  limits  as  my 
understanding  would  allow.  I  went  to  the  house 
to  talk  with  David. 

I  found  him  puzzled  over  what  little  he  had 
heard  of  what  I  had  tried  to  shout  to  him,  and  when 
he  had  listened  to  me  and  knew  what  it  all  was  he 
was  nearly  as  much  affected  as  I.  Old  man  Mac- 
kenzie came  out  and  listened  to  what  was  said  and, 
as  we  both  started  running  back  down  the  road, 
he  followed  us  as  fast  as  he  could  while  Vincent 
came  from  his  place,  running,  too.  In  almost  no 
time  we  stood,  all  four  of  us  together,  about  the 
dead  man.  We  took  hold  of  him,  finally,  and 
pulled  him  away  with  a  great  wrench  from  where 
he  was  sitting  and  then  something  awful  was 
revealed! 

Murder  had  been  done  and  in  such  a  way  as 
never  murder  v/as  done  before.  Through  the 
oaken  post,  at  just  the  height  where  the  lower 
part  of  the  man's  head  would  come  as  he  leaned 
back  against  the  wood,  a  three-quarter  inch  auger- 
hole  had  been  bored  and  from  it  projected  now  for 
two  or  three  inches  a  short,  four-cornered  spike  of 
iron,  all  bright  and  glittering  save  close  to  the  post 
where  the  blood  had  oozed  out  and  made  a  dark 
crust  about  it.      It   was  easy  enough    to  see    how 


282 


AN    ODD    SITUATION 


the  dreadful  deed  had  been  done.  The  hole  had 
been  bored  and  the  spike  thrust  into  it  from  be- 
hind just  so  far  that  the  point  would  not  quite 
project.  In  the  darkness  the  hole  would  not  be 
noticed  and  Gaherty  had  sat  leaning  almost 
against  the  point.  Then  3.  swift,  fierce  blow  from 
the  other  side  had  driven  the  spike  into  him  with 
such  sudden  force  that  it  did  not  even  move  his 
head,  but  had  sent  the  thing  right  through  the 
spinal  coid,  killing  him  instantly  and  leaving  him 
fastened  horribly  to  (he  post,  staring  as  I  had 
found  him. 

I've  read  that  somewhere — in  Spain,  I  think  it 
is — when  a  man  is  to  be  executed,  his  head  is  fixed 
in  some  kind  of  vise  and  held  so  that  a  spike 
fixed  in  machinery  just  touches  him  where  the  neck 
and  base  of  the  brain  join.  A  single  turn  of 
the  handle  drives  the  spike  ahead  and  in  the 
fraction  of  a  second  the  man  is  dead,  the  current 
of  life  being  cut.  So,  though  in  a  ruder  way, 
had  Gaherty  been  kdled.  He  never  knew  what 
hurt  him!  He  was  a  live,  watchful  man  one  in- 
stant, the  next  the  staring  thing  I  had  found  sit- 
ting under  the  honeysuckles. 

We  laid  the  body  decently  on  the  grass  by  the 
road-side  and  David  asked  Vincent  if  it  should  be 


POST    MORTEM 


283 


taken  to  his  house.  Vincent  nodded  but  said 
nothing  and  I  went  for  the  horses  and  wagon.  A 
few  minutes  later  what  was  mortal  of  Gaherty  lay 
upon  a  settee  in  Vincent's  best  room  and  we  came 
out  together  in  front  of  the  house.  Vincent  had 
all  this  time  spoken  never  a  word.  He  stood 
looking  at  us  stupidly  and  there  came  steadily  up- 
on his  face  a  look  of  fear,  or  hatred,  or  some- 
thing I  can't  just  describe,  and  he  shook  his  fist  at 
David  and  fairly  yelled: 

"You  murderer!  You  said  you'd  kill  him!  He 
told  me  of  your  threats — and  you've  done  it!" 

He  started  on  a  run  toward  his  barn  and  five 
minutes  later  came  out  into  the  roadway  with  his 
horses  hitched  to  a  buckboard  and  drove  off  furi- 
ously toward  Magone.  I  knew  what  that  meant 
and  turned  to  David: 

"He's  going  to  accuse  you  of  the  murder,"  I 
said,  "you'll  be  arrested  before  night  if  you  stay 
here  " 

"I  shall  not  go  away  from  here,"  he  answered. 
"Why  should  I?  It's  nonsense  to  charge  rne  with 
killing  Gaherty,  much  as  1  disliked  him.  You 
know  that.      The  whole  thing  is  absurd!" 

"But  you  threatened  him,  and  Vincent  knows  it. 
There'll  be  trouble." 


284 


AN    ODD    SITUATION 


There  seemed  slowly  to  dawn  upon  David  some 
idea  of  the  strange  position  in  which  he  was  placed. 
A  man  whom  he  had  threatened,  and  one  whose 
very  existence  was  a  burden  and  a  menace  to  him, 
had  been  found  murdered.  No  one  else  seemed  to 
have  such  interest  in  putting  Gaherty  out  of  the 
way — since  there  was  no  doubt  the  officials  at 
headquarters  had  been  led  to  believe  we  were  pro- 
fessional smugglers.  The  showing  was  all  against 
him.  He  bowed  his  head  and  thought  for  a 
moment. 

"It  looks  pretty  bad,  Jason,"  he  said.  "I'll  go 
to  the  house." 

I  walked  with  him  as  far  as  our  own  gate,  and 
he  went  in  while  I  kept  on.  I  could  think  of  only 
one  thing.  I  got  an  axe  and  went  back  to  where 
I  had  found  Gaherty,.  though  I  hated  to  go  near 
the  place.  I  tapped  the  point  of  the  spike  with 
the  flat  of  the  axe,  and  the  iron  went  back  easily 
enough,  and  I  reached  my  hand  through  the  fence 
and  drew  it  out.  It  fitted  the  auger-hole  to  a 
nicety,  without  being  tight.  I  examined  the  iron 
closely,  and  it  puzzled  me.  It  was  rusted  from  its 
thick  end  about  half  way  down,  but  from  there  it 
was  bright  and  clean,  and  the  point  of  it  was 
almost  as  sharp  as  a  needle.      I  put  it  in  my  coat 


POST    MORTEM 


285 


pocket,  and  was  about  going  back  to  the  house, 
when,  looking  toward  the  potato  field,  I  saw  John 
Cross  hard  at  work.  The  weeds  had  rather  got 
the  start  of  us  there,  and  something  remained  to  be 
done  with  the  hoe  after  the  cultivator  had  gone 
through.  It  seemed  to  me  singular  that  John 
Cross  should  be  working  there  so  unconcernedly, 
and  then  I  remembered  he  had  not  answered  when 
I  called  in  front  of  his  house,  and  that  he  might 
not  have  noticed  us  with  the  wagon,  and  so  didn't 
know  anything  about  the  fearful  discovery  of  the 
morning.  I  climbed  the  fence  and  went  over  to 
him  and  told  him  all  that   had    happened. 

He  did  not  even  look  up  as  I  spoke,  but  kept 
chopping  away  at  the  weeds.  I  didn't  know  what 
to  make  of  it,  but  a  fearful  suspicion,  which  had 
been  growing  in  my  mind,  deepened  as  I  noted  his 
strange  way.      I  must  have  the  truth  out   of  him ! 

"John,"  I  said,  "who  killed  Gaherty.?" 

He    looked  up    then,     and    actually    laughed! 

"How  should  I  know.!"'  he  answered.  "I'm 
glad  the  fellow's  gone,  though.  Good  thing,  isn't 
it.?  He  was  a  snake!"  And  the  man's  eyes 
gleamed  and  he  looked  as  merry  as  if  I'd  just  told 
him  some  joke. 

What  could  I  do.''     I  left  him  working  there  and 


286 


AN    ODD    SITUATION 


went  to  the  house  and  sat  down  in  a  chair  on  the 
porch,  and  tried  to  figure  it  out.  I  knew  in  my 
heart  at  whose  hands  the  murdered  man  had 
come  to  his  death,  but  I  couldn't  prove  it  yet.  I 
pulled  out  the  heavy  iron  spike  and  looked  at  it 
again,  and  then  the,  wonder  came  upon  me  that 
I  hadn't  seen  what  it  was  at  first.  It  was  a  drag- 
tooth! 

I  sprang  off  the  porch  and  was  over  in  a  shed 
back  of  the  barn  on  the  Canadian  place  in  no  time. 
In  that  shed  had  lain  since  spring  a  harrow  of  the 
pattern  we  used  to  call  "Butterfly,''  two  wings 
made  of  frames  mortised  together  and  hinged  at 
the  center.  A  tooth  from  the  harrow  was  missing. 
I  tried  the  one  I  had  in  my  pocket,  and  it  fitted 
the  vacant  place.  All  the  other  teeth  were  rusted, 
though,  and  this,  as  I  have  said,  was  bright  and 
brought  to  a  fine  point.  That  suggested  something 
else  to  me. 

There  was  a  grindstone  in  the  barn  which  worked 
with  a  treadle.  I  went  in  and  examined  it.  All 
around  the  grinding  surface  of  the  stone  was  a  red 
streak,  and  there  was  a  narrow  gutter  where  the 
point  of  something  had  been  borne  down  to  get  it 
finer  still.  I  knew  now  the  story  of  the  killing  of 
Gaherty  as  well,  almost,  as  if  I  had  seen  the  awful 


POST    MORTEM 


287 


crime  committed.      I   know  who   had   bored   that 
hole  in  the  post  and  thrust  in  the  sharpened  harrow- 
tooth,  and  had  then  lain  hidden  in    the   field   until 
the  watcher   had   come    at    night    and    taken    his 
accustomed  seat.      I  could  imagine  the  man  in  the 
field  stealing  up  toward  the  post  so  softly   that  the 
one  on  the   other  side   would   not   hear   even    the 
crackling  of  a  twig,  and  then  dealing  that   sudden, 
deadly  blow,  probably  with  the  flat  of  an  axe,  upon 
the  butt  of  the  sharpened  iron,  and  sending  it  into 
bone   and    brain.      It    was     clear  to    me,  and    as 
clear,  too,  now,  that  the   murder  had   been    done 
by  a  madman. 

It  was  nearly  noon.      I  started  to   the   house   to 
tell  David  what  I  had  discovered,  and  to  see  what 
we  should  do  about    having  John    Cross   arrested, 
but  before    I  got  there   Vincent   drove   up   to    the 
gate,  his  horses  all  a-lalher,  and  with  him  were  two 
other  men  in  a  double  buggy.      I  knew  them  both. 
One  was  the  sheriff  of  the   county   and    the  other 
was  a  deputy.     They  went   in  just   ahead  of  me. 
"There's  the  murderer!     Arrest    him!"    I    heard 
Vincent  call  out  as  I  mounted  the  steps,  and  when 
I  came  into  the  sitting-room  David  was  a  prisoner. 
The  women  were  in  the   wing,  where  David    had 
probably  asked  them  to  stay,  but  I  could  hear  a 


288 


AN    ODD    SITUATION 


sobbing.  Old  man  Mackenzie  was  stamping  about 
the  room  indignant  and  ugly  at  what  he  called  the 
outrage,  while  David  was  the  coolest  of  the  lot. 

The  sheriff  was  a  personal  friend,  and  David, 
simply  saying  that  he  knew  nothing  about  the 
murder,  added  that  he  was  ready  to  go.  The 
officer  explained  that  he  was  sorry,  but  that  there 
was  only  one  thing  for  him  to  do,  since  the  charge 
had  been  made,  and  added  that  they  had  better 
start  at  once.     Then  I  broke  in: 

"You've  got  the  wrong  man!  I  can  tell  you 
who  the  murderer  is!" 

"Who  is  he?"  said  the  sheriff. 

"His  name  is  John  Cross,  and  he's  crazy.  He's 
working  over  there  in  the  potato-field  now,"  and 
then  I  told  of  all  I  had  learned. 

Vincent  roared  out  that  it  was  all  a  lie;  that  I 
was  trying  to  shield  David.  "It's  only  one  of  their 
tricks,"  he  shouted,  but  the  sheriff  thought  differ- 
ently. 

"We'll  take  John  Cross  along,"  he  said  "Come 
over  to  the  potato-field  with  me." 

The  sheriff  and  I  started  for  the  potato-field, 
leaving  Vincent  and  the  deputy  with  David.  I 
showed  where  the  murder  had  been  done,  and  then 
we  turned  to  get  the  murderer.     The   field  was 


POST    MORTEM 


289 


vacant.  There  lay  the  hoe,  just  where  John  Cross 
was  using  it  when  I  talked  with  him,  but  the  man 
was  gone.  We  went  to  his  house.  He  had  not 
been  seen  by  any  of  the  family  since  breakfast- 
time.  We  hunted  keenly  then,  in  the  house  and 
in  every  barn  and  every  shed  on  either  farm.  We 
explored  every  hiding-place  to  be  thought  of,  but 
without  result.      John  Cross  had  disappeared! 

We  went  to  the  house  again  and  told  of  what 
had  happened. 

"What  did  I  tell  you!"  shouted  Vincent;  "it's, 
all  a  trick!  They've  spirited  the  man  away,  and 
are  going  to  put  the  blame  on  him.      It  won't  do!" 

The  she-iff  himself  was  annoyed  by  the  man's 
display  of  venom  and  told  him  sharply  that  he 
didn't  want  any  more  of  it.  David  went  into  the 
wing  for  a  few  moments,  and  then  came  out  ready 
to  go  with  the  officers.      He  called  me  aside: 

"Alice  is  going  to  stay  with  me  at  Magone  to- 
night. The  sheriff  has  agreed  to  it.  You'd  better 
follow  us,  bringing  her  in  the  light  buggy,  and  then 
drive  back  to-night  to  take  charge  of  things.  I 
shall  be  brought  back  myself,  of  course,  to-morrow, 
for  there'll  be  the  inquest." 

They  started,  David  and  the  two   men.  for  the 
buggy,  and  there  came  into  my  head,  in  a    dismal 


290 


AN    ODD    SITUATION 


way,  part  of  a  verse  of  poetry  I'd  seen  somewhere: 

"Two  stern-faced  men  set  out  from  I.ymi, 

Through  cold  and  lieavy  mist, 
And  Eugene  Aram  walked  between 

With  gyves  upon  his  wrists." 

Of  course  I  knew  that  there  would  be  no  real 
danger,  that  David  would  be  cleared,  but  the 
words  kept  ringing  in  my  ears  as  I  went  to  the  barn 
after  the  team  and  I  thought  of  handcuffs  every 
time  I  clicked  a  buckle  in  the  harnessing. 


CHAPTER  XXIV. 

TRUTH  FROM  A  LUNATIC. 

And  if  ever  my  shackles  I  rend  again 

And  leap  in  the  open  air, 
I'll  show  these  shallow  ones  what  is  brain  I 
I'll  make  some  troublesome  matters  plain, 
And  who  is  raving  and  who  is  sane, 

And  who  can  do  and  dare! 

I'm  bound  and  guarded!  I  cannot  rise. 

I'm  a  maniac  they  say. 
But  they  arc  the  madmen.     'Tis  I  am  wise 
And  ready  far    'orious  enterprise: 
They  shall  see  it  with  even  their  sodden  eyes, 

If  over  r  Sreak  away! 

— ///  I/is  Study, 

The  buggy  carrying  the  officers  with  David  was 
hardly  out  of  sight  before  I  had  our  own  horses 
with  the  light  buggy  before  the  house,  and  then 
went  in  for  Alice.  I  expected  to  find  her  crying 
and  broken  down,  but  I  was  mistaken.  She  was 
calm  and  quiet,  though  I  could  see  a  little  damp- 
ness about  her  eyes.  She  was  telling  Lucinda 
Briggs  what  to  do  regarding  certain  household 
matters.     Both  old  man  Mackenzie  and  Mrs    Lon^ 

291  '  ^ 


292 


AN    ODD    SITUATION 


were  more  excited  than  Alice,  and  the  good  girl, 
troubled  as  she  must  have  been  at  heart,  actually 
tried  to  soothe  them.  She  told  them  that  David 
had  said  it  would  be  all  right,  and  that  David 
would  not  say  it  unless  it  were  so,  even  to  relieve 
them.  Then  she  went  into  the  other  room  and 
kissed  the  babies  and  we  started  for  Magone.  I 
had  dreaded  that  trip  with  her,  but,  instead  of  be- 
ing a  trial,  it  was  a  relief  to  me.  She  was  so  brave 
and  sensible  and  made  herself  so  practical,  too, 
since  the  being  she  loved  most  in  the  world  was 
in  trouble.  She  knew  with  me,  as  soon  as  I  had 
told  all  the  circumstances,  how  the  murder  had 
been  done  and  by  whom,  and  we  agreed  together 
that  the  only  thing  to  do  was  to  find  John  Cross. 
I  knew  the  sheriff  would  send  officers  on  the  same 
errand  as  soon  as  he  reached  Magone,  and  I  re- 
solved to  make  a  big  effort  that  way  myself. 

We  drove  right  to  the  jail  when  we  reached 
Magone.  The  sheriff  lived  over  the  jail,  and  David 
was  still  up-stairs  with  him  when  we  got  there.  It 
was  worth  while  to  see  the  look  on  David's  face 
as  Alice  came  in.  It  was  finally  arranged  that 
David  and  "the  other  prisoner,"  as  the  sheriff 
jokingly  called  Alice,  should  occupy  a  big  room 
together,  inside  the  jail  proper,  but  hardly  to  be 


m 


TRUTH    FROM    A    LUNATIC 


293 


called  a  cell,  and  then  we  bade  them  good  night. 
I  had  a  talk  with  the  sheriff  later,  and  he  arranged 
to  send  two  good  men  back  with  me  to  help  in  the 
hunt  lor  John  Cross,  It  was  clear  enough  to  me 
that  the  officer  placed  no  faith  in  Vincent's  charge 
that  John  Cross  was  not  the  real  murderer  but  had 
been  spirited  away  to  serve  as  a  scapegoat. 

I  saw  a  lawyer,  too— David  had  asked  me  to 
attend  to  that— and  when  old  ex-Judge  Mason,  the 
best  one  in  town,  had  heard  all  ^he  story,  he  only 
laughed  over  all  that  related  to  David.  But  the 
part  a^out  John  Cross  interested  him.  "I've 
always  said  that  fried  pork  and  pie  were  under- 
mining the  foundation  of  the  republic,"  he  said, 
"but  I  don't  believe  I  ever  had  so  good  an  illustra- 
tion of  it.  However,  though  David  Long  is  all 
right,  or  will  be,  we  must  find  Cross.  He'll  show 
himself," 

I  told  him  that  I  didn't  know  about  that;  the 
man  had  all  his  senses,  and  was  only  morbid  in  a 
ghastly  way  a^^d  crazy  on  one  theme.  He  had 
evidently  become  scared,  and  might  have  fled  any- 
where into  Canada. 

"Maybe  so,"  said  the  old  judge,  "but  I  don't 
think  we  are  going  to  have  much  trouble." 

I  went  back  with  the   two    deputy  sheriffs,  and 


294 


AN    ODD    SITUATION 


when  I  got  there  found  Tennison  with  old  man 
Mackenzie.  I  was  mighty  glad  of  that.  Jennison 
hadn't  heard  of  the  murder  until  late  in  the  day, 
and  had  come  over  at  once.  His  presence  was  a 
comfort  to  me.  He  had  been  there  all  along,  he 
knew  all  about  us,  and  he  was  a  government 
officer,  whose  testimony  would  be  listened  to  with, 
maybe,  more  respect  on  that  account.  He  quite 
agreed  with  me  as  to  the  nature  of  the  crime  which 
had  taken  place,  and  joined  promptly  with  the 
rest  of  us  in  the  hunt  to  be  made  for  the  murderer. 

I  felt  convinced  that  if  John  Cross  had  not  fled 
absolutely  from  the  region,  he  would  be  lurking 
about  the  farms,  and  might  even  go  to  his  own 
house.  We  arranged  that  the  two  deputies 
should  givird  that  place,  hiding  between  the  house 
and  the  barn,  while  Jeniiison  and  I  should  look 
about  tlie  two  farms.  I  took  our  own  farm  and 
Jennison  the  Mackenzie  place.  We  felt  that  if 
either  of  us  came  upon  John  Cross  we  could  handle 
him,  though  a  crazy  man  or  a  desperate  one  seems 
sometimes  strong  beyond  his  muscles.  And  so,  as 
soon  as  it  was  fully  dark,  we  started  out. 

I  kept  about  the  barn  and  sheds  until  nearly  1 1 
o'clock.  It  was  not  a  very  clear  night,  but  I  had 
a  tolerab     good  view  of  the  road  and  of  the  fields, 


TRUTH    FROM    A    LUNATIC 


295 


and  I  made  up  my  mind  that  no  man  could  pass 
along  the  one  or  cross  the  other  unless  I  saw  him. 
I  walked  through  the  fields  once  or  twice,  but  saw 
nothing  living  save  the  cattle  lying  down,  chewing 
their  cuds,  and  a  fox  which  sneaked  by  me,  may- 
be with  a  thought  as  to  the  foolishness  of  trying  to 
get  a  chicken  on  that  particular  night.  It  was 
nearly  one  o'clock  when  I  determined  to  make  a 
final  round. 

I  did  not  go  across  the  fields  this  time,  but  went 
down  the  road  toward  the  spot  where  I  had  made 
such  an  awful  discovery  the  morning  before.  I 
haven't  much  superstition  about  me,  but  as  I  came 
near  the  honeysuckle  bushes  I'm  afraid  I  felt  a 
little  creepy.  I  could  fancy  that  dead  face  staring 
at  me  again  from  amid  the  flowers,  and  I  didn't 
like  it.  I  got  close  to  the  place  and  then  stopped 
for  a  moment  to  try  and  figure  out  where  John 
Cross  could  have  hidden  before  he  crept  up  on  the 
other  man.  And  then  I  saw  somethmg  which 
almost  made  my  heart  stop  beating. 

There  was  a  deep  drain  furrow  ran  across  the 
field  just  there,  and  along  its  sides  grew  a  ]ot  of 
weeds.  I  saw  something  dark  rise  out  of  this 
furrow.  It  straightened  up  gradually,  and  as  it 
did  so  I  could  tell  that  it  was  the  figure  of  a  man. 


wwmm 


296 


AN    ODD    SITUATION 


It  was  not  light  enough  to  distinguish  forms  or 
feaures,  but  I  could  see  his  movements  pretty  well. 
The  figure  rose  out  of  the  shallow  ditch,  and, 
bending  low,  began  creeping  along  toward  the  post 
where  had  been  Gaherty's  hiding-place.  So  softly 
did  it  step  that,  listening  keenly  as  I  was,  I  could 
not  hear  the  slightest  sound.  Nearer  and  nearer  it 
came  to  the  post,  until  it  was  close  beside  it. 
Then,  so  slowly  that  I  could  see  no  movement, 
though  it  rose  gradually  higher  and  higher,  the 
figure  raised  itself  until  it  stood  erect.  I  was 
too  amazed  to  do  anything,  even  had  I  been  so  in- 
clined. There  was  a  sudden  raising  aloft  of  the 
arms,  something  swung  through  the  air,  and 
''crack"  against  the  wood  of  the  post  came  some- 
thing heavy.  Then  the  figure  jumped  back,  care- 
ful no  longer,  there  was  a  laugh,  and  the  man,  who- 
ever he  was,  started  running  across  the  field. 

I  was  myself  in  a  mon^ent  then,  over  the  fence 
and  after  him  and,  shouting,  "Stop,  John  Cross! 
It's  I!  It's  Jason!"  but  I  might  as  well  have 
shouted  to  the  winds.  The  figure  but  ran  the 
faster.  It  gained  on  me  at  every  stride  or  leap — I 
don't  know  which  to  say,  so  wonderfully  it  ran  in 
a  way  I  could  only  guess  at  in  the  half-darkness — 
and  was  over  the  fence  and  into  the  wood,  while  I 


TRUTH    FROM    A    LUNATIC 


297 


was  two  hundred  yards  behind.  J  knew  there  was 
no  use  seeking  it  further.  I  went  back  and  found 
the  two  deputy  sheriffs  and  hallooed  for  Jennison 
and  got  him  with  us,  and  together,  as  the  daylight 
was  breaking,  we  explored  the  wood.  We  could 
find  no  one  there. 

^  We  all  returned  to  the  house  and   awaited    10 
o'clock,  the  time  when  the  inquest  was  to  be    held 
at  Vincent's  house.      Long  before  that  time  teams 
began  to  come  in  from  all  directions  and  hitch  up 
along  the  north   and   south   road.      From    Magone 
the  news  had  gone  swiftly  over  the  county,  as  such 
news  will,  and  the  farmers,  three-fourths  of  whom 
had  known  David  and  liked  him.   and   to   many  of 
whom  had  come  some  inkling  of  our  troubles,  were 
coming  in  to  see  the  end  of  the  thing.      A   number 
of  them  obtained   entrance    to   the    house   some- 
how, and  were  looking  at   the   dead    man  on    the 
settee.      I  wonder  how  it  is  that   so   many    people 
Hke    to    look    at    what    is  but  the  old  hulk    of   an 
abandoned  saw-mill,  or  grist-mill,  or  any  mill  you 
choose,  for  that  is  all  there  is  to  the   useless    mass 
which  is  left  after  the   soul   is   gone.      Those    who 
were  not  looking  at  what  was  temporary  of  Gaherty 
were  outside  in  the  road  telling  stories  and  trying, 
indifferently,  to  trade  horses. 


298 


AN   ODD   SITUATION 


Just  before  lo  o'clock  there  was  a  dust  down 
the  road  toward  Magone,  and  there  came  up  to  the 
door  three  buggies.  One  held  the  county  coroner. 
There  was  no  one  with  him,  for  his  jurors  had  been 
summoned,  and  were  all  in  the  house,  very  im- 
portant, before  he  came.  When  I  say  important, 
I  do  not  mean  that  they  were  not  sensible,  for 
they  were  mostly  good,  sturdy  farmers,  with  hard 
heads,  but  they  knew  that  they  were  jurors.  After 
them  came  the  sheritf  and  two  more  deputies.  And 
behind  all,  unguarded,  came  David  and  Alice  in  a 
light  buggy  hired  from  a  livery-stable.  That 
showed  what  the  sheriff  thought  of  the  charge 
against  David. 

I  needn't  tell  much  about  the  inquest.  I  don't 
know  how  to  describe  such  a  thing,  anyhow. 
David  was  brought  into  the  sitting-room  and  Alice 
took  a  seat  beside  him,  and  then  there  was  a  wait. 
Then,  finally,  came  in  all  the  jurors  and  sat  down 
in  a  row  of  chairs  which  had  been  placed  for  them. 
Then  the  coroner  came  in,  while  the  sheriff  stood 
off  at  one  side,  and  the  examination  of  witnesses 
began.  Vincent  was  the  first  one  called.  As  I 
heard  what  he  said  the  blood  boiled  within  me. 

Vincent  told  the  story  of  what  he  said  were  our 
attempts  at  regular  smuggling,  lugging  it  in,  some- 


« 


TRUTH    FROM    A    LUNATIC 


299 


:    down 
)  to  the 
oroner. 
ad  been 
!ry   im- 
portant, 
ble,  for 
h   hard 
After 
;s.    And 
ice  in  a 
That 
charge 

[  don't 
nyhovv. 
id  Alice 

a  wait. 
,t  down 
ir  them, 
fif  stood 
itnesses 
,     As   I 

me. 
vere  our 


I,  some- 


how, in  spite  of  Judge  Mason,  and  told,  then,  of 
David's  threat  to  Gaherty.  of  the  murder,  and  of 
all  that  had  happened,  closing  with  the  disappear- 
ance of  John  Cross.  Even  as  I  listened,  I  saw 
how  helpless  we  were,  upon  the  face  of  things. 
He  told  of  what  I  had  said  of  John  Cross,  and  of 
how,  when  we  looked  for  him,  John  Cross  could 
not  be  found. 

It  was  a  very  bad  case  against  us  when  Vincent 
left  his  chair.  He  had  not  sworn  to  any  absolute 
untruth,  yet  it  was  all  one  way.  Even  David, 
cool  as  he  seemed  to  be  at  first,  was  red  of  face 
now,  and  very  thoughtful.  There  was  no  other 
witness  but  Vincent  on  that  side.  Then  Judge 
Mason  called  me. 

We  had  done  what  we  had  never  done  on  the 
farm  before  that  morning — we  had  neglected  the 
cows.  Not  one  of  the  seven  cows  we  were  milking 
then  had  been  touched,  and  they  had  all  come  up 
into  the  road  before  the  gate,  where  we  milked 
them  usually,  and  stood  there  with  full  udders.  I 
was  looking  at  them  through  the  window  of  Vin- 
cent's sitting-room,  hardly  knowing  that  I  saw 
them  at  all,  when  there  grew  upon  my  sight, 
strangely,  a  familiar  picture.  John  Cross  had  been 
helping  us  with  the  milking  on   crowded  mornings 


11 


300 


AN    ODD    SITUATION 


and  as  I  looked  out  there  was  the  same  scene  all 
over  again,  except  that  David  and  I  were  lacking. 
There  were  the  cows,  and  there,  sitting  beside  old 
Flora,  the  boss  cow,  was  John  Cross,  n)ilking  away 
as  quietly  as  if  there  were  no  trouble  in  this  world, 
which  is  so  bleak  in  winter  and  so  pleasant  in 
summer,  just  as  it  is  with  events  in  the  lives  of  the 
people  who  walk  upon  two  legs  and  live  upon  it, 
and  think  they  own  it. 

The  coroner's  deputy  was  calling   for   me,  but  I 
did  not  mind  that — I  didn't   care    much   for   any- 
thing.     I  ran  out  and  down  the   road   and   up   the 
other  road  to  where  John  Cross   was   milking   old 
Flora.      I  caught  him  by  the  shoulder: 
"What  are  you  doing  here!" 
"Milking  Flora,  Jason;  can't  you  see.'"' 
"But  what  are  you  doing?     David  is  being  tried. 
It's  only  a  coroner's  jury,  but  he  is  being    tried  in 
a  way — up  at  Vincent's  house,  for  killing  Gaherty. 
You  killed  him !     You  know  you   did!     What   are 
you  doing  here.?" 

John  Cross  looked  up  at  me  almost  wonderingly. 

"They  mustn't  bother    David,"  he   said.      Then 

he  stopped  milking  and  threw  his  stool  over  beside 

the  fence  and  carried  the  milk   in   where    Lucinda 

Briggs  could  get  it,  and  then   came   back   to   me: 


TRUTH    FROM    A    LUNATIC 


301 

the 


"Let'sgoup  to  the — what   do  you   call    it? 
inquest." 

They  were  waiting  for  me  and  wondering  why  I 
had  gone  out  in  such  a  hurry.  I  went  over  and 
talked  with  Judge  Mason  a  n-'nute,  and  then  John 
Cross  was  put  on  the  stand.  He  went  up  and  took 
his  seat  in  the  chair  smilingly,  if  you  can  call 
"smilingly"  a  look  which  comes  only  from  lips 
pleasantly  enough  open  and  making  lines  across 
yellow  cheeks  drawn  hardly  over  out-sticking  bones. 

The  first  question  asked  by  Judge   Mason   was: 

"Do  you  know  who  killed  Mr.  Gaherty.?" 

John  Cross  laughed:  "Course  I  do.  I  killed  him 
myself.      Easiest  thing  in  the  world!" 

Judge  Mason  started  in  his  seat,  then  controlled 
himself  and  became  wise.  "How  did  you  do  it.?" 
he  asked. 

"He  came  down  nights  to  watch,  and  leaned 
against  the  post.  I  bored  a  hole  through  it  and 
put  in  a  drag-tooth,  and  then  I  watched  and 
plugged  him!  He  didn't  even  squeak!  I'm  a 
snake-killer,  I  am !" 

"But  you  were  there  again  last  night.  What 
were  you  there  for.?" 

"Well,  1  kind  o'  forgot.  I  thought  he  was  there 
again;  but  he  wasn't." 


302 


AN    ODD    SITUATION 


"Don't  you  know  it's  wrong  to  kill  another 
man?" 

John  Cross  laughed:  "I  dunno.  Pshaw!  I  kill 
snakes!" 

There  were  other  questions,  by  the  coroner  and 
by  a  lawyer  Vincent  had  got,  but  John  Cross  did 
not  change.  How  could  he?  He  was  an  unnatural 
creature,  spoiled,  made  a  maniac,  by  his  way  of 
living  nud  his  nervousness,  but  just  now  more 
natural  for  it  all.  He  was  asked  what  he'd  hit 
the  harrow-tooth  with.  He  said  he'd  used  noth- 
ing but  a  broad-axe,  and  that  when  he'd  run  away 
from  me  the  night  before  he'd  thrown  it  in  the 
ditch.  "Old  Jason  runs  pretty  well,"  he  said;  "I 
didn't  think  there  was  that  speed  in  him,"  and  he 
laughed  and  grinned  at  me. 

I  needn't  tell  of  the  rest  of  the  examination. 
Ail  came  out  clearly  enough.  There  wasn't  any 
chance  for  any  doubt.  We  even  sent  a  man  down 
the  field  and  found  the  broad-axe  in  the  ditch. 

There  were  no  more  witnessse.  Why  should 
there  be?  John  Cross  had  told  simply  upon  the 
stand  the  story  of  how  he  had  killed  Gaherty  and 
seemed  very  proud  of  it.  It  was  awful,  though  he 
laughed  as  he  repeated  it,  with  all  particularit}', 
and  I  need  not  tell  it  here.     And  the  man  was  taken 


TRUTH    FROM    A    LUNATIC 


303 


to  the  town,  and,  finally,  was  sent  to  an  insane 
asylum,  and  that  is  all  that  relates  to  him.  Of 
course  the  jury  bron^dit  in  a  verdict  properly,  and 
David  was  discharged. 


*   ' 


CHAPTER  XXV. 

AN  OLD  MAN'S  REFLECTIONS. 

The  centuries  brinj^  the  lessons, 

lint  men  are  slow  to  learn. 
The  moral  taught  with  every  age, 
The  story  writ  on  every  page, 
Make  humankind  but  sadly  sage. 

The  wheels  of  progress  turn 
With  but  a  sluggish  motion — 

Too  many  a  man  is  dumb. 
But  good  on  bad  encroaches  still, 
There's  more  of  right  and  less  of  ill, 
Faint  beacons  glimmer  on  the  hill; 

The  time  of  light  will  comei 

•—The  Horizon. 

A  lot  of  things  happened  after  the  coroner's  jury 

had  cleared  David  and  had  declared  John  Cross  to 

be  the  man  who  murdered  Gaherty,  but  to  us  they 

were  not  of  much   importance — I   mean    anything 

which     happened     immediately.       One    incident, 

though,  was  amusing,   and  to   Lucinda  Briggs   in 

particular,     the   cause    of    unbounded   happiness. 

David    was   pretty    well    known   throughout  the 

county,  and  was  popular.     The  story  of  Vincent's 

304 


-.,,-# 

•-^6,/ 


AN  OLD  mam's  reflections 


305 


rancor  had  got  about— indeed,  it  showed  sufficiently 
at  the  inquest  — and  after  it   vvps  all   uver,    a    big, 
strapping  young  fanner  got  into  a  dispute  with  the 
man.     It  was  only  over  some  trilling  matter,  such 
as  the  hitching  of  the   farmer's  horse   to   a   shade 
tree,  but  I  think  he  rather  aggr^vated  Vincent  pur- 
posely to  get  up  an  excuse  for  grappling  him.     He 
threatened  to  throw   Vincent    into  a  rather   deep 
barn-yard  puddle,  and  when   some   harsh    answer 
was  snarled  back,  he  kept    his  word.      He    was   a 
young  giant  in  build,  and  he   caught    Vincent    up 
and  fairly  pitched  him  into  the  dirty  mess.      It  was 
a  pitiful  object  which  crawled  out   of  the    puddle, 
but  no  one  resented  the  treatment  of  him  or  offered 
him  any  sympathy.     There  were   only   comments 
that  it  served  him  right,  that  he   had   been   a    bad 
neighbor,  and  that  maybe   it   would   teach    him   a 
lesson.     I  don't  think  he  profited  by  it  much;   his 
disposition  was  too  evil  for    that,  but  it    disgusted 
him  with  the  people  of  the  region,  and  he  sold  his 
farm  cheap  and    left  the   region  within   a   week. 
And  if  you  saw  Lucinda  Briggs  chuckling  to  herself 
any  time  within  a  year  after  that  you  may  be  sure 
she  was  thinking  of  what  took  place  on  that  day  of 
the  inquest. 

It  seemed  to  me,  as  I  said  in  the  beginning,  that 

20 


..-#• 
'-.^t. 


.i—UiUSRJ! 


liHHMJ 


306 


AN    ODD    SITUATION 


all  that  had  happened  to  us  on  the  farm  would  be 
of  interest  if  only  told  in  the  right  way,  but  I  know 
I  have  failed  in  that.  The  gift  doesn't  come  to 
everybody,  and  I  know  it  hasn't  come  to  me.  I 
don't  think  I  should  have  tried  to  tell  of  it  all,  but 
for  the  man  whom  I  needn't  name  here,  who  has 
been  spending  the  later  summer  with  us  and,  who, 
when  I  chanced  to  tell  him  of  what  had  happened, 
made  me  promise  to  try  to  write  it  out  in  my  own 
way.  He's  the  best  shot  at  a  wood-cock  I  ever 
saw.  particularly  at  F.iap-shots  as  the  birds  pitch 
over  the  willow-bushes.  In  the  evening  he  looks 
at  what  I  have  written  and,  he  has  divided  it  all  up 
into  chapters  and  put  some  verses  at  the  top  of 
each — though  I  don't  know  what  he  does  that  for; 
it  seems  almost  finicky — but  he  won't  change  any- 
thing I  have  written.  He  says  that  must  stand  by 
itself,  and  so  it  has  to  go,  though,  to  tell  the  truth, 
I  feel  a  little  shaky.  I  don't  know  how  I  shall 
feel  when  I  see  it  in  a  book,  and  realize  that  it  is 
something  written  by  me — only  a  rugged  old  hired 
man  on  a  farm. 

The  newspapers,  even  the  big  ones  in  the  big 
cities,  had  columns  about  the  murder  of  the  cus- 
tom-house officer,  and  how  David  was  arrested  for 
the  crime,  and  how  it  came  out  that  not  he,  but  a 


AN  OLD  man's  reflections 


307 


lunatic,  was  the  guilty  man.  And  in  connection 
with  the  story  as  it  was  printed,  came  out  all  the 
real  facts  about  what  was  really  a  persecution,  and 
from  what  they  thus  saw  the  officials  at  head- 
quarters seemed  to  realize  that  mistakes  had  been 
made  about  us,  and  David  got  some  very  kindly 
letters  from  them.  Jennison  probably  had  some- 
thing to  do  with  this,  so  far  as  the  Canadian 
authorities  were  concerned,  for  this  side-whiskered, 
short-coated,  sturdy  man  had  got  excited  himself 
during  the  trial,  and  swore  he'd  leave  a  service 
which  often  worked  wrong,  because,  in  his  opinion, 
it  wasn't  founded  on  common  sense.  We'd  be- 
come, suddenly,  people  of  some  importance. 
There  was  no  more  misunderstanding  as  to  our  in- 
tentions, and  soon  no  more  attention  was  paid  to 
us  than  to  other  farmers  along  the  border.  That 
was  quite  enough,  though. 

We  were  3tili  people  without  a  country,  as  David 
said,  because  we  had  two  countries,  and  though 
Vincent  was  a  long  way  off  and  Gaherty  a  far 
greater  distance,  we  felt  that  new  complications 
might  arise  at  any  tirrie,  and  new  troubles  come 
upon  us.  So  it  was  that  when  an  offer — not  a 
very  good  one — was  made  for  the  Mackenzie  farm, 
David  consulted  with  his  father-in-law  and  let  the 


3o8 


AN   ODD   SITUATION 


property  go.  The  old  man  was  disposed  to  resist 
at  first,  and  take  the  farm  back  himself,  but  he'd 
got  accustomed  to  his  new  home,  and  he  couldn't 
leave  his  grandchildren.  The  farm  went,  and 
with  the  n  oney  thus  secured..  David  got  the  Vin- 
cent place,  that  had  been  bought  only  as  a  sort  of 
speculation  by  a  big  farmer  who  lived  two  or  three 
miles  away,  and  who  was  ready  to  sell  at  a  litfle 
advance.  The  Mackenzie  mortgage  was  transferred, 
and  there  we  were,  with  all  our  land  in  one 
country,  and  divided  by  a  north  and  south  road 
instead  of  by  an  east  and  west  one.  Even  our 
Canadian  girl,  the  mother  of  our  children,  was 
happier  for  it.  But  David  and  I  have  never  been 
quite  content;   as  farmers,  we  couldn't  be. 

There's  no  use  talking  though  I  don't  generally 
admit  it,  the  old  Mackenzie  farm  is  a  better  one 
than  the  Vincent  place.  It  lies  better  and  has 
better  soil  and  is  just  fitted  for  some  of  the  crops 
we  need.  There  it  lies  and  a  hard-working  man 
raises  good  crops  on  it  and  hauls  them  away  to  the 
north  and  gets  less  reward  for  his  labor  than  we  do 
for  ours.  It  lies  there  aggrav  itingly,  with  only  an 
imaginary  line  running  somewhere  along  the  road, 
but  a  line  which  is  a  great  wall,  along  which  great 
crimes  have    been  committed.     I  grit   my  teeth 


AN  OLD  MAN  S  REFLECTIONS 


309 


whenever  I  look  at  that  splendid  farm  and  think 
that  we  might  have  it  still,  and  that  the  twins  and 
their  sister  were  really,  after  a  fashion,  robbed  of 
a  portion  of  their  heritage.  And  the  twins  and 
their  sister  are  a  great  deal  to  me.  As  for  the 
young  lady,  I  am  her  s'ave — so  is  everyone  else, 
for  that  matter — but  the  boys  are  my  especial  care. 
I'm  proud  of  them  for  they  a.e  going  to  the  dis- 
trict school  now  and  have  got  well  beyond  their 
letters,  for  they're  five  years  old,  and,  besides,  are 
the  best  built  pair  of  cubs  of  their  age  in  the 
county.  I'll  bet  on  that.  There's  a  neat,  even 
piece  of  turf  out  in  the  orchard  where  the  three  of 
us,  the  twins  and  I,  go  sometimes,  and  if  you  could 
look  on  you  vs^ould  see  some  very  pretty  wrestling. 
They're  about  evenly  matched  and  the  practice 
teaches  them  to  keep  their  tempers.  By  and  by 
I  want  David  to  allow  them  a  couple  of  pair  of 
small  boxing  gloves  and  what  follows  will  be  better 
for  them  still.  That  will  give  them  self-reliance 
and  self-control,  I  think,  beyond  any  other  form 
of  exercise.  I  know  some  people  object  to  it  but 
I  wpnt  to  make  a  couple  of  gentlemen  of  my  boyc. 
It  is  midsummer  now  again  and  the  days  are  just 
as  bright  as  when  poor  John  Cross,  who  is  in  an 
asylum  still,  used  to  glide  about  the  fields  nursing 


3IO 


AN    ODD    SITUATION 


dark  thoughts  of  the  ugly  officer  who  found  a  pleas- 
ure in  persecution.  The  honeysuckles  still  grow 
along  the  fence  beyond  the  creek,  and  the  oak  post 
with  that  gruesome  auger-hole  in  it  still  stands, 
and  the  boys  of  the  neighborhood  may  be  seen 
sometimes  gathered  about  it,  telling  a  new-comer 
of  what  once  happened  there.  But  there  is  no 
other  reminder  of  the  dark  days  when  we  were  all 
growing  old  so  fast.  We  are  doing  well,  as  things 
go  in  this  world. 

It  is  human  nature,  though,  I  suppose,  to  chafe 
at  what  is  not  and  yet  might  be  so  easily,  and  I 
cannot  help  looking  across  to  the  north  at  the  grass 
fields  and  the  growing  crops  stretching  away  so 
pleasantly,  and  grumbling  that  the  land  is  divided. 
Why  should  there  have  been  such  a  story  to  tell  at 
all?  That  is  what  bothers  me.  Why,  somehow, 
as  men  get  to  be  more  and  more  knowing  and 
reasonable,  does  it  not  come  that  they  realize  that 
the  ways  of  nature  are  really  the  best  and  that 
what  is  unnatural  does  not  profit  one  time  in  a 
thousand?  Maybe  it  is  only  because  I  am  an 
ignorant  old  man,  one  who  knows  little  save  what 
he  has  learned  from  the  newspapers  or  seen  with  his 
own  eyes,  but  I  do  believe  things  could  be  adjust- 
ed better.      I  do  believe   that   at   least    brothers 


AN  OLD  man's  RErLECTIONS 


311 


d  a  pleas- 
still  grow 
.a  oak  post 
11  stands, 
y  be  seen 
lew-comer 
ere  is  no 
'e  were  all 
,  as  things 

!,  to  chafe 
;ily,  and  I 
t  the  grass 
J  away  so 
is  divided, 
'y  to  tell  at 

somehow, 

)wing   and 

ealize  that 

and   that 

time   in   a 

I  am    an 

save  what 
;n  with  his 

be  adjust- 
t    brothers 


in  blood  should  work  together.  That  would  be  a 
great  improvement,  on  one  continent  anyhow.  If 
that  much  could  come,  maybe  it  would  be  followed 
in  the  end  by  an  even  wider  better  feeling  and  there 
might  be  some  prophecy  in  a  wonderful  poem  I 
once  read  which  told  of  a  coming  time  when  nations 
would  not  be  mere  fighting  dogs,  and  when,  as  it 
put  it  prettily: 

•♦The  war  drum  throbbed  no  longer  and  the  battle-flags  were  furled 
In  the  parliament  of  man,  the  federation  of  the  world." 


THE   END 


